Case Study: Nestlé achieves precise, consistent chocolate production and optimized food‑processing efficiency with COMSOL Multiphysics

Nestle - Customer Case Study

Nestlé’s Product Technology Centre in York, UK, faced tight manufacturing challenges across confectionery and cereal lines: ensuring identical chocolate‑bar weights from a multi‑nozzle depositor, achieving even wafer baking temperatures to preserve crunch, and designing an extruder viscometer housing that could withstand high pressures. To address these issues, Nestlé used Comsol’s COMSOL Multiphysics (importing geometries from SOLIDWORKS) to model the complex fluid, thermal, and structural behavior in its processes.

Using COMSOL Multiphysics, engineers simulated Nestlé’s non‑Newtonian chocolate flow, airflow and heat transfer under baking plates, and stresses/displacements in the extruder to optimize designs. The Comsol simulations delivered nozzle flow uniformity to within 0.1% of the target, validated baking‑plate temperature profiles (revealing bolt‑induced hotspots to be corrected), and reduced pressure on the viscometer housing to safe levels—improving product consistency, safety, and manufacturing efficiency.

Nestle

William Pickles

Process Engineer