Blackpool team hoping for sweet success with candy cane venture

Resort rock maker, Coronation Rock, based at the airport enterprise zone, has teamed up with confectionery machine maker Loynds on the Blackpool and Fylde Industrial Estate off the M55, to develop an automated machine to enter, what has been traditionally a labour intensive sector.

The automated machine, the only one of its kind, has taken three years and will bring the art of candy cane production to the UK, in the country’s traditional home town of sugar confectionery.

Loynds, is a worldwide supplier of candy, chocolate and wrapping machinery and the bespoke machine was designed by the in-house research and development team and engineered and manufactured in Blackpool.

North America and China have dominated the production of candy canes.

It is difficult to effect the perfect bend in each cane. The new machine creates the bend in the candy through a precision, mechanical engineering process of heating and blast chilling, allowing the candy cane to be produced in large quantities with just four to five operators on the production line.

The new machine will enable Coronation Candy to produce a minimum of 300,000 candy canes a day. The company has taken on four new workers and plans to take on another 20 by the end of 2019.

Colin Levene, finance and strategy director at Coronation Candy said: “The launch of the new machine comes at a significant time of growth for us a company, as we continue to expand our lines throughout the international gifting and confectionery markets.

“Without the machine, we simply couldn’t justify the levels of man power needed to create the candy cane by hand.

Loynds employs 19 and supplies confectionery machinery to over 100 countries.

John Loynds said: “The development of the candy cane machine for Coronation Candy has been a great success but our journey doesn’t stop there as we’re always looking for new ways to improve technology and systems.”