At the No. 7 factory in Lotte’s Urawa plant in Urawa, north of Tokyo, machines extend for tens of meters down the floor, and the air inside the factory is thick with the sweet aroma of chocolate mass. There are rows of roll refiners, which grind the ingredients down to the micron level to make the fine chocolate mass used in Lotte’s mainstay Ghana brand chocolate bars. Alongside them are a large number of conching machines, which add the final adjustments to the taste and flavor of the chocolate, and mixers that ensure the chocolate is a homogeneous mass.
Lotte is one of Japan’s best-known chocolate manufacturers. Step into any convenience store or supermarket in Japan, and you are sure to see chocolates, candy, biscuits, gum, and ice cream from Lotte. Its products, such as Choco Pie cakes, Toppo biscuits, and Koala’s March cookies, are on just about every kid’s snack menu. The company is also active globally. It owns Wedel in Poland as well as several production sites in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand.
The core of what makes its chocolate goodies possible is reliable equipment from Bühler. The relationship between the two companies goes back nearly half a century. The machines in the No. 7 Factory were built over 20 years ago, and yet they look and perform like new models, with modern touch-panel controls and the latest equipment. This is the result of a major retrofit carried out by Bühler.