Ghoulishly Good Throughput: Nercon Helps Big Brands Boost High-Speed Candy Production

When candy and confectionary demand spikes, there’s no room for slowdowns. At Nercon, we design and build conveyor systems engineered to keep high-volume candy lines moving smoothly from start to finish. Our engineered solutions help manufacturers maintain consistent throughput, even during peak production seasons, while reducing changeover time with modular, easy-clean designs. Whether it’s chewy, chocolate, or hard candy, Nercon conveyors are built for reliability and uptime, ensuring every treat reaches the finish line fast.

Sweet Throughput in Action

Earlier this year, two leading candy manufacturers turned to Nercon to help them prepare for their busiest times. They faced similar challenges: increase line speed to meet higher order volumes without product damage, while improving flexibility for rapid product changeovers. Our engineering team collaborated closely with each plant to analyze their existing layouts, identify bottlenecks, and design conveyor systems that could deliver reliable performance under tight timelines—even with a skeleton crew.

For one customer, the challenge was moving cartons of full-size candy bars coming off the ceiling-height line gently to the case packer at floor level as quickly as possible. After designing the conveyor system, our team performed comprehensive in-house testing to identify adjustments that would optimize throughput. The solution included Nercon’s gripper elevator to change product elevation safely and securely, along with our Rapid-Rail® adjustable guide rails. These helped create a conveyor system that allows for fast, simple product changeovers. See the Rapid Rail in action. 

Our vertical accumulation conveyor, which can adjust automatically for different product sizes,  provided buffering which improved line efficiency. Finally, we integrated sensors across the conveyor system, enabling our customer to monitor the line and maintain optimal flow and throughput.  

Ghosting Downtime with Innovative Accumulation

For another Nercon customer, the output of snack-size wrapped candy bars coming off the line exceeded the bagging machine’s input capacity, creating a bottleneck that disrupted overall line efficiency. While bulk accumulation was clearly the answer, the equipment had to be able to protect the small, soft-centered bars from damage.

In this case, the secret to scarily smooth candy throughput was Nercon’s high capacity storage conveyor system. The upper trolley conveyor was configured for specific throughput targets to provide bulk storage and a controlled buffer for the customer’s high-volume operations. The trolley utilizes sensing technology, traveling back and forth overhead, distributing products to the belt below as programmed to automatically accommodate the desired pounds per minute of accumulation. Use of the storage conveyor system ensured steady, reliable product supply between processing and packaging stages at the optimal throughput rate. 

There’s no sugarcoating it: Your conveyor system makes or breaks throughput. In high-volume candy production, every belt, guide rail, and accumulation point affects how efficiently product moves from mixing to molding to final packaging. 

That’s why Nercon designs conveyor solutions with precision, flexibility, and uptime in mind. From gentle handling of soft candy bars to fast, reliable transfers into bagging and cartoning, our conveyor systems are engineered to keep lines balanced and running at peak performance.