Ets Dumoulin & Cie of France have a long history supplying panning equipment to the food and pharmaceutical industries worldwide. The company has been in business since 1936 in the 1960’s Mr. Bernard Dumoulin developed the world’s first large-scale “automatic” coating pan for the chocolate and candy industry. The first machine had a batch size of 500 kg and was displayed at the Interpack exhibition in Germany in 1969.

Dumoulin manufacture a complete range of automatic high capacity panning systems for chocolate engrossing and varnishing; hard and soft, sugar and sugar-free coating as well as pharmaceutical and Nutraceutical applications in a wide selection of batch sizes.

One of the important advantages of the Dumoulin system is that their design results in the smallest bed depth of any similar machine. This is very important because it is:
     
   

     
• Gentle of difficult and delicate centers
     
• Increases the amount of surface area in contact with freshly conditioned air, reducing the processing time.
     
• Allows the coating to be distributed very quickly and evenly over all the centers.
   

Dumoulin provides complete turnkey installations for coating including:
     
   

     
• Automated feeding and storage
     
• Panning
     
• Coating material storage and spraying for liquid and dry coatings
     
• Air handling
     
• Discharge systems
     
• PLC and PC supervisor packages.
   

Dumoulin have two main types of confectionery pans: the IDA with a solid drum which is used for chocolate as well as soft panning, and the IDA-X with side ventilation and a perforated pan. They also have the IDA XP range of pharmaceutical pans.

Chocolate Panning

Dumoulin offer the C/V combination system where chocolate engrossing and polishing are achieved in the same pan during the same cycle. This innovative concept is possible due to the self-cleaning system using infrared heat. The pan is heated after each batch using IR; this melts the residual chocolate on the surface of the pan. Once the centers for the next batch are loaded the melted chocolate is immediately transferred to the centers, therefore keeping the surface of the pan completely clean. Maintaining a clean surface allows perfect polishing (varnishing) directly after the chocolate coating.
     
      This combination concept allows one machine to be used instead of two; it also eliminates unnecessary material handling and guarantees no loss of chocolate to the pan. IDA C/V chocolate and varnish combination pans are available in batch sizes of 500, 1,000 and 2,000 kg. The rear extraction system for the spray bar allows complete cleaning in and out of place for allergen changeover.

Dumoulin also now offer belt coaters for chocolate engrossing and polishing.

Sugar-Free and Sugar Hard Shell Panning

Dumoulin supplies sugar-free and sugar automatic turnkey coating installations in batch sizes of 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 kg. The IDA-X range is used for sugar-free and hard sugar shell coating and this design has a perforated pan allowing the drying air to be blown through the product bed.

The syrup spray system is guaranteed not to block due to crystallization, after each spay all the nozzles are washed with their own water jets.

Soft Panning

Soft panning such as the production of jelly beans is normally much faster than hard panning but requires intermediate drying or curing steps often taking 24 hours.
     
      Dumoulin have not only automated the application of the dry and wet ingredients but have also automated the complete handling of semi-finished products in a low bed depth environment. Soft Panning steps include: gumming, engrossing, vented storage, smoothing and varnishing.