Hot Chocolate

Hot chocolate blends cocoa, sugar and milk powder — components that separate by density and cake with moisture. The three carry different particle sizes and different bulk densities, so every transfer and every vibration on the way from the mixer to the filler drives the fine cocoa down and lifts the coarser sugar. Left standing in a hopper the same blend bridges over the outlet, while the sugar and the milk solids pull humidity out of plant air until the surface sets into a crust. At the fill point this shows up as airborne fines, and fines that settle on a sealing jaw are what become a leaking pack months later. Because the blend is not free flowing, gravity dosing and volumetric cups give a spread that widens as the hopper level drops. Agitated auger filling keeps the blend uniform per cup: the agitator turns the product continuously so it neither bridges nor consolidates, and the auger meters by screw rotation rather than by settled volume, so the dose holds while head level changes. A shut-off nozzle closes the powder column at the end of each stroke and keeps fines away from the sealing area. Auger tooling and hopper geometry are matched to the dose band rather than run as one size across the whole range. The single-mug stick or sachet is the category's core retail unit — one portion, one mug, no scoop and no measuring. A hot chocolate stick pack machine covers retail multipacks, hotel and office supply, and vending refills; the narrow pack is also what allows the highest lane count. Sachets take the wider single and double doses used in foodservice and catering. Above these, VFFS pillow bags carry family and bulk formats for buyers who decant into a tin at home. In every format, barrier films preserve flavour through seasons of storage — the product sells in winter but is very often filled months earlier. A hot chocolate filling machine here works across a dose range of 10 to 200 g, from a single mug portion to a catering sachet. Output is cycle rate multiplied by lane count, and lane count follows pack width. SPM1200 reaches up to 840 packs per minute at twelve lanes on a narrow stick, and the same machine gives up to 490 packs per minute at seven lanes once the pack widens. Any output figure has to be read together with the pack width it was measured at. For hot chocolate sachet packaging machine projects the range is ARTISTICK at 1 to 5 lanes, SPM320 at 1 to 8, SPM800 at 4 to 12 and SPM1200 at 7 to 12. VB, VB-MINI, VB-PLUS and VB-Q are also configured for this product. Typical buyers are beverage powder producers and private-label co-packers, foodservice and vending suppliers, hotel and catering groups, and retail brands with a winter drinks line. The same hot chocolate packaging machine is usually shared with other non-free-flowing beverage powders, so lane count and dose band are normally specified for the whole family rather than for one recipe.