Recommended configuration✓ Food-grade product-contact parts
Flow wrap machine for bars and slabs; fill-seal machine for chocolate in pre-made bags
Bars and slabs fed one by one on the infeed conveyor; pieces weighed on a four-head or multihead weigher
Chocolate bars and slabs, chocolate pieces, blocks and cubes, granola and protein bars
Flow-wrapped packs in printed film; pre-made bags on a fill-seal machine
Bars and slabs up to 300 mm long and 40 mm high; bags of 30 g to 500 g; confirmed at trial
Date and batch coder; a stored recipe for each flavour and printed film
Product behaviour
Chocolate and cereal bars are sold one piece at a time in printed film, chocolate marks and softens when it is handled, and cereal bars crumble. Those traits, more than the recipe, decide how a chocolate wrapping machine is set up.
Every pack carries print. Bars and slabs are wrapped in printed film, so the flow wrapper has to cut each pack with the print in the same place. Servo drives keep the print in register on every pack, across every flavour you run.
Chocolate marks when it is handled. Chocolate softens with heat and shows fingerprints, so slabs and bars are placed on the infeed conveyor and wrapped without being handled again. Loose pieces and buttons are weighed into bags instead of being wrapped one by one.
Cereal bars crumble. Granola and cereal bars hold oats, nuts and dried fruit, which break away at the edges. They run on the same flow wrapper, with the infeed set to carry each bar to the film without knocking it.
Recommendation
Chocolate bars and slabs are wrapped on a flow wrap machine. The bars travel along the infeed conveyor, the machine forms printed film into a tube around each one, seals it along the underside and seals and cuts both ends. A three-servo machine keeps the print in register, so it suits printed chocolate wrappers in several flavours.
Chocolate pieces, buttons, blocks and cubes sold in bags are weighed instead, on a four-head or multihead weigher feeding a fill-seal machine that opens, fills and seals pre-made bags.
Bar wrapping
A chocolate wrapper machine sized to the slab. For chocolate bar packaging, the flow wrapper we supplied for 60 g slabs takes BOPP or PET/LDPE film 120 to 340 mm wide and wraps packs 50 to 160 mm wide and up to 40 mm high. With double cutters it cuts packs from 90 to 300 mm long, and with a single cutter from 150 to 300 mm. The infeed carries the slabs on pushers or a belt, chosen for the product. Taller products need a machine with a larger cutter, so we size it to your tallest piece.
Print, seal and coding. A colour-mark sensor reads the print on the film and sets the cut position, so each wrapper is cut with the print in the same place. Each seal has its own temperature control, which suits different films, and the machine wraps when it senses a slab and stops when none arrives, so no film is wasted. A date coder fitted to the flow wrapper prints the batch number and best-before date on the film as each bar is wrapped.
Cereal bars
Same flow wrapper, gentler infeed. Granola, protein, energy, candy and snack bars, including bars coated in chocolate or yoghurt, are wrapped one by one on a flow wrapper in the same way as chocolate bars. Bars made with oats, nuts and dried fruit crumble at the edges, and coatings chip when bars are handled, so the infeed carries each bar to the film without knocking it. The flow wrapper wraps single bars, or multipacks of bars when they are grouped before the infeed.
Bars we have wrapped. We have supplied flow wrappers for granola and protein bars. Send us a sample of your bar and its printed film, and we will run it at our Riversands showroom before you order.
Pre-made bags
Chocolate pieces, buttons, blocks and cubes are sold by weight in bags, so they are weighed and packed rather than wrapped one by one. The bag size is confirmed on a trial with your chocolate.
A four-head weigher fill-seal machine weighs chocolate into pre-made bags of 30 g to 500 g, 100 to 180 mm wide and 100 to 300 mm long, and opens, fills and seals each bag. Stand-up and zipper pouches are filled the same way on a fill-seal machine; the pouch formats are on the pouch packaging machines page.
Chocolate blocks and cubes sold in bags from a few grams run on a weigher-fed bagging line, the same setup as our snack packaging machine.
Individual chocolates, toffees and sweets can also be twist wrapped or fold wrapped one by one on a sweet wrapping machine before they are bagged. Tell us the shape and size of each piece and the wrap you want.
Output
The flow wrapper we supplied for chocolate slabs is rated at 40 to 140 packs a minute, depending on the pack and film. Its buyer planned for about 4 tonnes of chocolate a month at the start and 10 tonnes later: at 60 g a slab, 10 tonnes is about 167,000 slabs a month, or roughly 7,600 a working day, around three hours at 40 packs a minute. The four-head weigher fill-seal machine for chocolate in pre-made bags is rated at 10 to 18 bags a minute. These are ratings of each build, not results measured on a customer’s line.
We confirm the output for your chocolate and pack size by running a trial before we quote, rather than promising a figure we have not measured.
Experience
For a Gauteng chocolate maker setting up its own line, we supplied a three-servo flow wrap machine that wraps 60 g slabs in printed film across several flavours. It is rated at 40 to 140 packs a minute, depending on the pack and film.
For a chocolate producer we supplied a four-head weigher fill-seal machine that weighs chocolate into pre-made bags of 30 g to 500 g, 100 to 180 mm wide and 100 to 300 mm long. It is rated at 10 to 18 bags a minute.
We have supplied flow wrappers for granola and protein bars, which are wrapped one by one in printed film in the same way as chocolate bars.
We have supplied bagging lines for snacks, sweets and chocolate blocks and cubes in bags from a few grams. We run a product trial for every machine we sell, so send us your chocolate before you order.
We supplied a VFFS line with a 14-head multihead weigher, Z-type elevator, check weigher and thermal date printer to a confectionery producer that packs wrapped sweets into small pillow bags of about 10 g to 20 g. The line takes 520 mm film, forms bags 50 to 350 mm long and 80 to 250 mm wide, and is run by two operators.
Flow wrapping, twist wrapping and weigher fill-seal machines from our range.
A flow wrapper sealing each piece in its own printed pack, the setup for chocolate bars and slabs.
A double-twist machine wrapping sweets one by one, the way individual chocolates and toffees are twist wrapped.
A four-head weigher filling pre-made bags, the setup for chocolate pieces sold by weight.
A linear fill-seal machine opening, filling and sealing pre-made bags.
Quotation
A chocolate wrapping machine is quoted to configuration, so we need six things about your product and plant.
The product: chocolate bars, slabs, pieces or cereal bars, and whether they are coated or filled
The length, width and height of each bar or slab, or the bag sizes and weights for loose pieces
Your printed film and its width, or your pre-made bags
The number of flavours or designs you run
The output you plan for, now and as you grow
Floor space, power and compressed air at your plant
Send a sample of your chocolate or bar with the enquiry and we will trial it before we quote. For layout planning, the flow wrapper we supplied for chocolate slabs is about 4.6 m long and 0.8 m wide with its infeed and runs on a 220 V single-phase supply; its lead time was 8 to 10 weeks from order. For what shapes the figure on a machine quotation, read the packaging machine cost guide.
Related pages
Chocolate bars are wrapped on the flow wrap machine, so this page sits under the flow wrap packaging machine. Chocolate pieces weighed into bags use the same weighers as our snack lines.
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PackMan purchased an Automatic 6-Lane, 4-Side Seal Vinegar Packaging Machine, and it has been performing reliably since installation. The machine delivers consistent packaging quality, operates efficiently, and has met our production expectations.
SA Packaging Machinery delivered a solution that has met our expectations. The equipment has been reliable in daily production, and we’re pleased with its performance. We found the team knowledgeable, professional, and willing to assist whenever required.
We’ve been very happy with the equipment supplied by SA Packaging Machinery. It’s straightforward to use, performs consistently, and has helped us improve our production process. The team was easy to work with and made the entire experience smooth.
Send us a sample of your chocolate or bar and its printed film, and we will run it at our Riversands showroom before you order.
Questions
Yes. The flow wrapper stores a recipe for each flavour and its printed film, so changing flavour means recalling the recipe and loading the next printed roll rather than resetting the machine by hand.
Yes, where the bars fall within the machine’s pack size range. A stored recipe changes the settings between products, so one flow wrapper can wrap chocolate bars and cereal bars on different shifts.
Yes. Pre-made stand-up and zipper pouches are filled on a fill-seal machine, with the chocolate weighed on a four-head or multihead weigher. The pouch formats are on the pouch packaging machines page.
The flow wrapper on this page was bought by a chocolate maker setting up its own line at about 4 tonnes a month. For smaller volumes, a four-head weigher with a semi-automatic band sealer fills pre-made bags of 20 g to 1 kg, with an operator placing each bag.
