You’ve perfected your recipe. Your bars look exactly how you imagined them when you started.
But every day, you or a staff member are still standing at the bench, folding paper or cardboard around each bar, one at a time. How long is this taking? How much is it costing you? How many more chocolate bars could you make a week if a machine wrapped them?
Let’s take a look at how a Lareka BTB25 chocolate-wrapping machine can save you time and money in the long run.
Quick summary
- Hand-wrapping chocolate bars typically costs around $1.50 per bar once labour and packaging materials are factored in, versus roughly $0.30 per bar with the Lareka BTB25.
- For a producer wrapping 100,000 bars a year, the machine saves you around $120,000 annually.
- The Lareka BB25 pays for itself in around three years, with faster payback at higher volumes.
How much does hand-wrapping chocolate cost your business?
Start with labour. At a typical Australian hourly rate of around $30, and a hand-wrapping pace of roughly one bar a minute (accounting for breaks and the usual stop-start of a production day), each wrapped bar carries about $0.50 in labour cost.
For a producer wrapping 100,000 bars a year, that’s $50,000 in labour, just for wrapping.
Then there’s the packaging material itself. Hand-wrapping typically uses pre-cut, pre-glued cardboard or paper sheets, because they’re simpler to fold by hand. Convenient, but not cheap, averaging around $1.00 per bar.
There’s also a quality factor: hand-wrapping consistency varies operator to operator, shift to shift, and any bar that doesn’t meet standard gets rewrapped or written off.
Add labour and packaging together, and hand-wrapping costs around $1.50 per bar. For a 100,000-bar-a-year producer, that’s around $150,000 annually.
How much money can the Lareka BTB25 chocolate-wrapping machine save your business?
A chocolate-wrapping machine changes the economics in two ways.
First, labour is reduced significantly. One operator can feed and monitor a machine wrapping far more bars per hour than a team wrapping by hand, freeing up staff for higher-value work elsewhere in production (and for your business to make more bars).
Secondly, packaging costs can drop. Machines often don’t need pre-folded, pre-glued sheets designed for hand-folding, so the material itself becomes cheaper. Paper and cardboard sheets for the Lareka BTB25 packaging machine often cost closer to $0.20 per bar rather than the $1.00 typical of pre-folded, pre-glued sheets.
Put the two together, and the per-bar cost of wrapping drops from around $1.50 (for hand-wrappers using pre-folded, pre-glued sheets) to around $0.30.
| Hand-wrapping | Automated wrapping with Lareka BTB25 | |
| Labour cost per bar | $0.50 | $0.10 |
| Packaging material cost per bar | $1.00 (for pre-cut, -folded, and -glued sheets) | $0.20 |
| Total cost per bar | $1.50 | $0.30 |
| Annual cost (100,000 bars) | $150,000 | $30,000 |
That’s a saving of roughly $120,000 a year for a producer wrapping around 100,000 bars annually.
Working out your break-even point
The simplest way to think about payback is: annual savings vs. machine cost.
At $120,000 saved a year for a 100,000-bar producer, the Lareka BTB25 pays for itself in around three years.
If you’re making 200,000 or 300,000 bars, then a wrapping machine is a no-brainer. Think of how quick that payback period will be!
How many chocolate bars per week before a wrapping machine becomes worth it?
As a rough guide, once you’re consistently wrapping more than roughly 10,000 bars per month, it’s time to run the numbers on automation. It all comes down to your specific labour costs, packaging choices, and growth plans.
Why choose the Lareka BTB25?
The BTB25 uses a higher-quality wrap than standard flow wrappers. It also offers several options for packaging styles, including full envelope, band-wrapping, cardboard box, cardboard band-wrapping and more. You can customise it to use the same envelope fold you’d do by hand, so the finished product looks lovingly crafted, not mass-produced.
It wraps up to 25 bars a minute and handles sizes from 25 x 30 mm napolitains up to 100 x 200 mm bars. Format changeovers of around 15 minutes allow you to run small bars in the morning and switch to full-size tablets in the afternoon.
It’s gentle enough to wrap bars with toppings and inclusions without crushing nuts or dried fruit, and it runs on foil, film, paper, or cardboard, including cocoa shell waste options if sustainable packaging is part of your story.
Our verdict is this: for producers who are nearing 10,000 chocolate bars per month, or want to speed up wrapping while maintaining the premium hand-wrapped look, the Lareka BTB25 is absolutely worth it.
Take a look at the Lareka BT25 chocolate-packaging machine.
FAQs about chocolate-wrapping machines
How much does hand-wrapping chocolate bars actually cost?
Around $1.50 per bar once you combine labour (roughly $0.50 per bar at typical Australian wages) and pre-cut, pre-glued packaging materials (around $1.00 per bar).
Is the Lareka BTB25 worth it?
For most producers wrapping around 10,000 bars a month, yes. For some producers, a chocolate packaging machine can cut wrapping costs from around $1.50 to $0.30 per bar, with typical payback within three years for producers making 100,000 bars per year.
How much can the Lareka BTB25 save a producer each year?
For a producer making 100,000 bars a year, switching from hand-wrapping to a machine can save around $120,000 annually.
Can the Lareka BTB25 handle bars with toppings or inclusions?
Yes, in most cases. The Lareka BTB25, for example, wraps bars with rough inclusions like nuts and dried fruit without crushing them.
Time to get a chocolate-wrapping machine?
Every business case is different. Your wage costs, your packaging choices, and your production volume all shift the numbers above.
If you’d like us to run this against your actual figures on the Lareka BTB25 or any of our other chocolate-wrapping machines, get in touch with Artisan Industrial. We’ll help you work out where automation could save you money, and whether now’s the right time to make the move.
