Making large inclusion ice creams possible

The ice cream market relies on a continuous stream of new products to meet fast-changing consumer demands – such premium ice cream products with fruit, berries or chocolate inclusions.

The family-owned Hennig-Olsen Is (Is means ice cream in Norwegian) company, aims to launch up to 15 new products each year. These novelties bring in around 10% of the company’s turnover.

“The ice cream market is driven by innovation,” explained Paal Hennig-Olsen, CEO at Hennig-Olsen Is. “We have always wanted to include large chunks in our ice cream sticks, but there have been limitations as to what we can do with our existing equipment. So, when we heard about  Tetra Pak’s Extrusion Wheel, we were keen to try it out.” 

Commenting on the problems encountered with more traditional extruders when it comes to larger inclusions, Torben Vilsgaard, Ice Cream Academy manager at Tetra Pak, said: “When introducing large inclusions into extruded ice cream, the quality of the product is affected, including the texture, shape and overall appearance. This is because when the machine wire hits a large inclusion, it cannot cut through it and so it is pushed in front of the wire, resulting in an uneven product surface. In addition, the impact from this collision between the wire and the inclusion is transferred to the ice cream slice, which causes a shift in how the ice cream slices become positioned on the stainless-steel trays of the extrusion line. The uneven positioning of the products then leads to increased waste when the products subsequently fail to be picked up from the trays.” 

 

Solutions to these challenges – such as low-temperature ice cream and nitrogen-cooled moulds – can be expensive and impractical which is why Tetra Pak developed the Extrusion Wheel which employs a vertical rotating design that moves continuously at a synchronised speed to the line, to produce up to 12,000 products per hour per lane. It can produce stick ice cream products with large-sized inclusions, such as whole nuts, real fruit segments, or cookie dough chunks at the high capacity– while also reducing waste and increasing production capacity.

The Extrusion Wheel is designed to produce extruded products such as sticks, sandwiches and slices with large inclusions of up to 25mm in diameter. Instead of pouring ice cream into a form and then inserting a stick into the ice cream, the wheel starts off by placing the stick in an exact position in a cavity.

A nozzle leads the ice cream into the cavity, where it starts to flow around the stick with slight overpressure, allowing the ice cream space to expand slightly in a controlled way to ensure an even surface. The ice cream fills each cavity completely and carries the evenly distributed inclusions. This method ensures that the sticks so not collide with large inclusions that could shatter the sticks or move them out of position. 

The patented wheel design aligns with trays to ensure correct placement every time whilst also minimising waste to less than 2%.

“The wheel fits well into our existing line, it takes up little space and is easy to use, ”said Hennig-Olsen. “It’s easy to dose the amount of pieces, and there is much less waste when compared with the previously used machine.” Another advantage is ease of maintenance. “You can see clearly how the machine works and so it is easy for our technicians to undertake maintenance,” continued Hennig-Olsen. In addition, no nitrogen cooling is required. “We have tried nitrogen-based equipment before, but it is much more complicated. It’s efficient but very costly to run, so we were happy to replace it with the wheel.” 

The first ice cream Hennig-Olsen Is produced on the new equipment was Crème Caramel, a premium product with caramel sauce and large caramel inclusions that is dipped in milk chocolate. It quickly became the company’s best seller. The company has also produced premium ice creams with peanuts and caramel sauce, and with cookie dough and chocolate sauce using the Extrusion Wheel, which has allowed the company to more than double its capacity.