Caotech from Wormerveer, the Netherlands, specializes in the development and production of grinding equipment and related equipment for the cocoa, confectionery and chocolate industry.

The main component of chocolate, cocoa, is extracted from cocoa beans. These cocoa beans are ground to produce a homogeneous, viscous ‘syrupy’ cocoa mass is formed. This mass is for chocolate production, or it is used to make cocoa powder and cocoa butter. But before chocolate can be made from the cocoa beans, a lot of precise actions must take place. Processes in which, in addition to food processing, the right temperatures and just right grinding of the beans are very important.

Caotech is located in the Dutch Zaan region for a reason. Close to the cocoa processing factories, which have traditionally been present there and form the largest cocoa processing industry in the world. The Caotech machines are installed in a processing street, in which the raw materials go through different processes. The composition of these tailormade foodprocessing units  are usually delivered to the customer as a turnkey project. Because the processing process needs to be very precise, its obvious these machines must function flawless. The equipment is controlled by PLC techniques. A PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) is a computer designed to control machines and processes. A PLC is similar to a normal PC, but is designed to survive in a PC unfriendly industrial working environment. Because the machines are sold all over the world, it is also necessary to be able to manage and read them remotely from other locations. The fitlet2 PCs supplied by MiniDis’, are used successfully and satisfactorily as management stations. And as an embedded Industrial VPN firewall, as the extra secure gateway. The reliable and stable operation of these fitlet2s plays a decisive role in this. They are used to guarantee the proper functioning of support and management, even in the most demanding production environments.