Epuipment

Looking for small scale equipment to set up processing plan.

Capacity of about 104 tons per year .

(Roaster, grinder, and Dehulling/winnowing. Was thinking about pressing butter but so far all the machines I have looked at are very costly) Looking for some feedback.

updated by @sabastion: 04/10/15 09:12:34PM

Process what? Liquor? Chocolate? It's very inexpensive to make a widower, but the legal implications are significant...

It's only April, but I'll go ahead and cast my vote for this as comment of the year.

liquor and Chocolate...

That's winnowing Sebastian.

Do you have some information?

You're looking at handling, assuming you want to start from beans, about 10-12 tons of dry beans a month. You've moved out of the realm of hobbiest or artisinal shop, and into relatively large scale manufacture. I think you'll find that on this scale, all of your options are going to be costly i'm afraid...an 1800 mm 5 roll refiner just sold from Rabin (auction house) from a Nestle facility for $20,000 - which is an absolute STEAL. If you're cost conscious - and you should be prepared to spend multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars at this scale i'd think - you might want to consider watching the auctions.

Thanks for the info. I am trying to set up for about $160,000. So the Auctioin house is called "Rabin Auction House".

Sebastion:

Sebastian is right: your budget is unrealistic.

You will find it difficult to produce this amount of finished chocolate for this money.

You may be able to purchase equipment used but it will most likely need extensive (and expensive) refurbishing.

One thing you may not have budgeted for: If your location does not have the necessary power (at least 400 amp 3-phase 480) the cost of getting the necessary service installed from your local utility company and your facility wired could easily cost $40,000all by itselfif it were being done in the US . I can't speak for what it might cost on the island you want to build on.

Another thing to consider at this scale (it's less of an issue in smaller batches) is materials storage and handling.

:: Clay

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clay - http://www.thechocolatelife.com/clay/

So in your opinion about how much could I produce per year for that initial investment?

The infrastructure is not a problem unlike here in the states our power on my island is much more stable. I will be doing most wiring and install my-self. I need to know sickly from an equipment standpoint what my cost will look like. One of the things am considering is cutting my processing down some, and reserve the surplus for export as a raw product.

Sebastion:

Before it's possible to answer this question it's important to know exactly what you want to produce and in what quantities:

• Nib
• Liquor (how refined?)
• Butter
• Powder
• Finished chocolate

:: Clay

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
clay - http://www.thechocolatelife.com/clay/

Nib, Liquor, (as refined as possible), I wanted to do butter but have not been able to find a small press that cost effective. I must archive as much degree of processing of the beans so can to archive my business model.

Your in luck. Below is a small production line that someone need to get rid of.

http://www.actrader.com.au/ProductionLines/ChocolateProduction/ChocolateProductionLine.html

I've seen pretty good butter recovery froma simple but powerful hydralic ram organized like a basket press but at thatkind of volume (600 kg / day avarage)you would need an army of them.