The company Schaeffer Berger is a company founded by Robert Steinberg and John Scharffenberger. The company specializes in producing the high quality chocolate utilizing the finest cacao beans available.
The company differentiated itself from their several others competitors, by being one of the first to produce chocolates “From beans to bar”, meaning that Scharffen berger, unlike its rivals produced the chocolate by doing all the processes in the chocolate production itself. Market
The chocolate market is segmented into 2 main categories, the mass market and the premium market.
The mass market and premium market represent respectively 75% and 25% of the whole market.
Being a company that specializes in high quality chocolate, Schaeffer Berger positioned itself in the premium chocolate market; this market is considered to be the growth segment of the industry with 15-20% annual growth from 2000 to 2010.
Production Cycle
The production cycle has 8 main processes.
Bean cleaning
In this first process the imported beans are cleaned, to separate the beans from the unwanted materials like twigs, small stones.
The cleaning machine could process 200KG (2 Bags) of beans at a time, and takes 15 minutes to do it. 4% of the beans are lost in the cleaning process.
Afterwards the beans were deposited into large beans ready to be transported to the next process.
Roasting
At this stage the cacao beans are sent to a roasting machine in order to optimize the flavor.
The company uses artisan production methods to measure the process at each stage.
The roasting machine roasts 25KG (0.25 bags) for 1.25 Hours, after this the bags needed to cool for 15 minutes.
Winnower
Here the beans were cracked to separate the nib from the shell, using the nibs for production.
The machine processed a 450KG of beans per hour in batches of 250Kg only 74% of nibs were recovered.
Melangeur
In the melangeur the