While many snacks in the region seem to be made elsewhere, the beloved Kit Kat bar is made right here in the UAE.
As soon as you step into the Kit Kat factory in Jebel Ali, you are taken back in time – the concentrated, unmistakable scent whisks its way up your nostrils. For those who grew up in the UAE, the smell beckons vivid memories of chocolates snapped in two and shared in the playground, at home, and beyond.
The Kit Kat bar is just one of many products made at the Nestle Dubai Manufacturing NMC plant in Jebel Ali’s Technopark.
The plant began producing Nido powdered milk in 2009 and Kit Kat in 2010, before moving on to Quality Street and Maggi products.
Today it produces more than 5,000 Kit Kats a minute and one billion a year.
“We have five basic flavours, but more than 20 Kit Kat products. For example, the chunky format has five layers of wafer, which gives a different experience from our normal two-finger Kit Kat, with three layers of wafer,” says Adnan Ozkiranartli, innovation and renovation manager.
He says the factory has developed its own unique flavours, based on Middle East consumer preferences. The two favourites? Caramel and hazelnut. Kit Kat Senses, for example, has small pieces of hazelnut inside – designed to deliver a “richer mouth sensory experience”.
Excitement must be set aside momentarily. Before setting foot in the factory, employees and visitors must don white lab coats, fluorescent vests, hair and beard nets – and boots. Then, they start vacuuming their clothes and washing their hands, aided by an eight-step guide on the wall.
Standing at the plant’s entrance, Adib Yehya, production group leader, kicks off the tour: “Here we have three main sections – first is the chocolate process, then the wafer process and then the finishing process, which is mixing or merging chocolate together with the wafer.”
Being careful to stay within the yellow safety line, he points to the chocolate manufacturing section, on the left, and the wafer manufacturing on the right.
Two of the key attributes of the Kit Kat bar, he explains, are the creamy chocolate and the crispy wafer within. The chocolate is received in two different forms – either as solid blocks, which are melted down and stored in a liquid state, or as powder, before they are sent to refiners. These refiners are crucial to reducing the particle size of the chocolate – making it smooth, without burning any of the fats. The two-roll refiner gradually takes the particle size down to 100 microns, or one millionth of a metre, which is then further reduced by a five-roll refiner down to 19 microns.
“These are flakes, it is still not a liquid. We then convey it to something called the conche – a big container where the chocolate will stay rotating in different temperatures, at different speeds, to develop the flavour and to change it from a solid state into the liquid state,” says Mr Yehya.
The process produces a strong smell, which indicates the evaporation of various unintended volatile compounds. Once this is complete, the chocolate is conveyed to large storage tanks, ready to go for moulding. Overall, the factory can produce up to 100 tonnes of chocolate a day.
Factory manager Xolile White points out that the machinery basically runs on an “autopilot” system.
“Once you press this button, it takes care of itself. It knows when to slow down, when to go faster, what the pressure needs to be.”
At the tipping station, raw materials, such as milk powder and flour, are conveyed through a hopper, into silos on the second floor. Large 25 kilogram blocks are also stripped and melted down in a trough – producing liquid materials, such as cocoa mass, cocoa butter and butter fat. These raw materials are mixed together, then with sugar, then sent to the refiners.
This station is also the birth of the wafer process, which continues through to a large room called the batter station. This is a particularly loud room. Machines bang and clatter, creating what sounds like part of a percussive musique concrete piece.
“Batter is the terminology for the mixture between flour and water in the liquid state,” says Mr Yehya.
Pointing to a large silo, he explains: “This is the wheat flour silo, where we receive the flour after tipping and it goes into the mixer together with the water and ingredients for 10 minutes.”
This is then conveyed to the reaction tanks, where the batter is rested for half an hour to develop the second crucial Kit Kat trait – the crispiness of the wafer. After this, the liquid is sent to a storage tank and then pumped through pipes into the ovens for baking.
Further along is a large room, with two long walls lined with identical, metallic ovens. They look minimalistic, with few details, save for a small handle. Each oven has 95 plates and cooks at 53 sheets per minute. The plant is now installing a third one, to boost production capacity.
“These two pipelines will convey the batter to the batter arm, which will deposit the batter evenly across the plates before moving to the end of the oven and back, over around 107 seconds.”
The wafers are released, stacked up and cooled. “The wafer at this stage will be very dry. It will be like a sponge and will start catching the humidity from the atmosphere, in order to be matured.”
If the wafers are too dry, they will suck up the moisture from the chocolate, and start to break the bars. “So, we force moisture inside in what we call a maturation tunnel for two minutes.”
The matured wafer then goes for layering – which results in the multiple layers of wafers visible in finished Kit Kats. They are covered in praline, a combination of ingredients – such as cocoa powder, sugar, vanillin and lecithin – that act as an adhesive.
The praline layer helps build the “wafer books” – which form the interior of each four-fingered bar – so they withstand the cutting process without breaking. Small, leftover shards of wafer are collected here, and then sent to be processed back into praline.
While machines have done most of the work up until this point, humans are now needed. There are about 300 employees working in the plant, running three shifts over 24 hours.
Operators sanitise their hands every half an hour, and swabs are taken once per shift to make sure standards are maintained.
Mr Yehya walks into a corridor, lined with motivational and informative posters. He walks past the moulding section, which consists of three lines. These are configured to create different products – two producing two and four-finger Kit Kats at high speeds, another, slower one that produces a wider range of products – such as Quality Street, and custom flavours.
To reduce the risk of detempering, also known as losing the shine, chocolate is deposited into moulds of the same temperature. These are turned, to allow the excess chocolate to run off.
“Cocoa butter can crystallise in different ways,” explains Mr Ozkiranartli. “We want to crystallise the right form, which has a melting point exactly the same as your body temperature.”
After cooling, wafers are placed into the chocolate shell. The result is a cross-section of a Kit Kat, unto which another layer of chocolate is then stamped. An extra layer of chocolate is added before a 25-minute cooling process.
The Kit Kats are then ready for demoulding. This is a quirky process, accompanied by much squeaking and whirring. Mr Yehya compares it to taking ice cubes out of a tray.
“How do you remove them? You twist it and then you turn it. Here, we do the same, but we don’t have one million operators to do it, so we use a machine instead.”
He points to the “twister”, a circular machine, and a pneumatic hammer, which work together to demould the pieces.
The resultant bars pass along conveyor belts, manned by pairs of quality inspection staff. Their flickering eyes scan the belts for tiny defects, and they reach out and discard any imperfect bars at lightning speed.
The final part of the process happens when the products are wrapped individually, then collectively in display boxes or multipacks.
The display box line starts off slow, before the Kit Kats are suddenly catapulted at great speed. A hyper-sensitive metal detector is ready to eject any bars containing any contaminants.
After this, the bars pass through thick rolls of foil, printed with the familiar Kit Kat design. There is also a roll of the thin, red “peel” tape, which is used to open each individual bar. Overall, the machine can process 680 pieces per minute.
Richard Dungca, a machine operator from the Philippines, demonstrates how one of the large machines can be shut off with a key, so it cannot be started while someone is inside.
“We’re doing this on our own to protect ourselves and our colleagues.”
The resulting display boxes and multipacks are manually loaded into cardboard boxes, taped and shrink wrapped, ready to be shipped off.
halbustani@thenational.ae
