The film ‘Chocolat’, released in 2000, tells the tale of a young woman who charms a small French village with her chocolaterie. 78 years earlier, a similar story took place in Zemun, in what is now Serbia – a real-life, non-Hollywood version with the roles reversed. After the First World War, a French soldier decides to settle in Serbia for love – and not just in the romantic sense. He falls for a woman called Theresa, as well as for the local chocolate recipe, which he begins to make himself and successfully sells in a small café. In doing so, he laid the foundation for the ‘Louit’ chocolate factory, later renamed ‘La Cigogna’, which grew steadily through mergers and changed its name several times – from Soko Štark in the 1960s to Atlantic Štark since 2020, after the Croatian Atlantic Grupa food group had acquired the company in 2010.
With such a colourful history, it is hardly surprising that Štark’s portfolio – the shortened company name – also became more and more diverse over time. In addition to chocolate, such as the nationally renowned Najlepše želje – Serbian for ‘Best Wishes’ – the company produces biscuits and savoury snacks such as peanut flips. For decades, consumers have also been delighted by a chocolate-covered marshmallow-type dessert treat shaped like a banana. The individually flow-wrapped ‘Bananica’ comes in boxes of different quantities. Equally popular is ‘Citro’, a chocolate-coated jelly confection with a lemon or orange flavour, which is also sold in flowpacks and boxes.
The packaging processes, which the manufacturer partly automated 20 years ago, are as complex as you would expect. Many of them, including cartoning, were still carried out manually. However, as so often in the company’s history, a change was on the horizon after two decades, as the existing packaging line was leading to costly bottlenecks in final packaging. As the portfolio grew, a more efficient and flexible solution was needed that would continue to ensure high performance and efficient packaging. However, the catch was that the solution had to be up and running in as little as three weeks in order to resume production as quickly as possible. So how to proceed – and with whom?
A chicken pâté called Argeta inspired the decisive idea. The product, packaged in metal tins, had been part of the portfolio years ago and Atlantic Droga Kolinska in Slovenia and Bosnia had successfully packaged it with two TLM packaging machines from Schubert. “We had vivid memories of Schubert’s commitment and experience,” says Marko Abramović, Managing Director at Atlantic Štark. “We were keen to work with Schubert again to automate our Bananica and Citro lines. So we immediately contacted the experts in 2023.”
Happy faces: The Schubert and Štark teams joined forces on an ambitious major project.
In discussion: Area Sales Manager Dirk Andrich (left) designed the hall layout.
All in a row: The chocolate-coated products enter the line.
High-speed flow-wrapping: The Flowpacker processes 850 Bananica products per minute.
Multiple sizes: Bananica is sold by Štark in boxes of 16, among other sizes.
The case packer in action: the boxes are placed into erected transport cases and lidded.
Compact. There is space for four machines lined up in Belgrade.
