IE5 motors Manufacture confectionery more sustainably

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Netzsch Fine Particle Technology, a manufacturer of stirrer ball mills for the confectionery industry, can further reduce the energy consumption of its machines with ABB's IE5 synchronous reluctance motors. Confectionery manufacturers like Storck thus benefit from lower energy costs and contribute to greater sustainability.

The confectionery industry is one of the industries with a high performance requirement for processing machines. Sharply increased electricity prices are an additional challenge. This makes ABB's synchronous reluctance motors (SynRM) interesting for the corresponding areas. ABB offers all air-cooled and liquid-cooled SynRM in the IE5 efficiency class, i.e. with ultra-premium efficiency. As a result, companies benefit from rapid amortization due to the highest energy efficiency.

Efficiently grind confectionery masses

A user of ABB's IE5 SynRM is Netzsch Fine Particle Technology GmbH (hereinafter Netzsch), a manufacturer of stirrer ball mills for the confectionery industry. The machines are specifically used there for the production of confectionery products (chocolate, filling masses, etc.).

In the production of fillings for chocolates, the various recipe components such as sugar, fat, and milk powder are mixed and then crushed to final fineness with the stirrer ball mill. With the horizontal stirrer ball mill Masterrefiner, Netzsch offers a wet grinding system with high throughput performance and effective crushing.

Further reduce energy needs

Compared to other agitator bead mills, the Masterrefiner has a lower energy requirement. This is now further reduced by the IE5-SynRM. The air-cooled IE5-SynRM has been used in a Netzsch agitator bead mill by the confectionery producer August Storck KG since 2023. The family business, with brands such as Toffifee, Merci and Knoppers, is one of the major confectionery manufacturers in the world.

Storck aims to keep environmental impacts as low as possible as part of its sustainability policy. Efficient energy use and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions are central action maxims for the company. All processes, including production processes, are optimized to reduce resource use. The energy-saving potential of the SynRM, which helps achieve the company's sustainability goals, was a convincing argument for the contract with ABB. Netzsch had good experiences with ABB in several projects since 2019.

Savings potential in confectionery

The production of confectionery masses offers great energy-saving potential due to the long run times of the processing machines. Therefore, the very high efficiency of ABB's IE5 SynRM is a decisive point for both Netzsch and Storck.

Through close collaboration between Netzsch and ABB Motion, a technical solution was realized that is tailored to the specific needs of Storck. In the Storck Ohrdruf plant, stirrer ball mills of the Masterrefiner type in the filling mass production were equipped with an air-cooled IE5 SynRM (75 kW, 4-pole, 1,500 min^-1, size 280).

Up to seven percent energy savings

The comparison with a mill plant with an IE3 asynchronous motor made it possible to directly compare the energy consumption. A multi-week comparison in the fall of 2023 showed that between 3 percent and 7 percent energy can be saved with the IE5 SynRM.

This example makes it clear that through close cooperation and the implementation of tailor-made technical solutions, companies can increase their energy efficiency, reduce costs and at the same time reduce their CO₂ footprint with SynRM technology.