Nutella biscuits arrive: the technologies behind Ferrero's Nutella Biscuits

At the end of October, Ferrero announced i Nutella Biscuits, a crunchy biscuit made with wheat flour, brown sugar and heart of Nutellla. Ferrero has planned the distribution in a resealable bag of 304 grams (22 biscuits), at the recommended selling price of 2.99 euros (but the final choice of the price is up to the retailer).

In recent days the company has launched a campaign based on "end users" and with installations such as Casa Nutella, a structure set up in Piazza Gae Aulenti in Milan with the slogan "Come. Alive. Condividi ”to invite consumers to taste the new biscuits for the first time.

Once they tasted the Nutella Biscuits, the lucky ones could express their level of satisfaction on a tablet and the global level of "likes" fed a heart-shaped counter (the same imprinted in the cookie dough) together with interactions on social media, searches on Google and visits to the Nutella Ferrero site.

The Nutella Biscuits are available progressively in all hypermarkets and supermarkets from the beginning of November with an official launch on November 4th and 5th: behind the new biscuit there are enormous investments in research (game 10 years ago) and technologies.

The technology behind Nutella Biscuits

Nutella biscuits are in fact produced in the Balvano (Potenza) plant, where Ferrero has invested over 120 million euros to create an ad hoc production line. The new cookies were launched in April in France and the manufacturer's goal is to market them throughout Europe. The product was launched after ten years of testing. The group from Alba focuses on the biscuit market, challenging established products such as the Baiocchi del Mulino Bianco Barilla or the famous Ringo produced by Pavesi.

But what are the technologies behind a seemingly simple cookie?

Ferrero tells us that Balvano, where the biscuit is produced, was made a lhigh-tech and cutting-edge technology, with a futuristic artificial intelligence system, which includes 18 vision systems installed, who take the time to carry out capillary checks on product quality.

In the establishment it is also present "The picker island" defined as the largest in the world, with over 40 mechanical arms, 7 robots and about 200 engines. It weighs as much as a Boeing 747 and for the assembly took 8 months. Apparently it is the most innovative and complex line that Ferrero has created, with the aim of becoming the reference biscuit factory for all of Europe.

Even the "assembly" of the biscuit is the result of a patent: a millimetric synchronization process to put together a short pastry wafer, with wheat flour and cane sugar, with Nutella inside, closed by another biscuit.

Ferrero has 4 Research and Development centers in Italy, Luxembourg, New York and Singapore. In the last 8 years it has invested a billion in plants only in Italy, where there are 4 production poles (Alba, Pozzuolo Martesana, Sant’Angelo dei Lombardi and Balvano), and 600 people who deal only with product development.