1. Melting The making of Wrigleys gum begins by melting and purifying the gum base, which comes from small round balls.
2. Mixing The melted base is poured into a mixer that can hold up to one ton of ingredients. Sweeteners and flavors are added at just the right moment and from just the right amounts and then slowly mixed.
3. Rolling From the mixers, a large “loaf” of gum is sent through a series of rollers that form it into a thin, wide ribbon. Each pair of rollers is set closer together than the previous pair, gradually reducing the thickness of the gum. A light coating of finely powdered sugar or sugar substitute is added during this process to keep the gum from sticking and to enhance flavor.
4. Scoring At the end of the rolling process, the continuous ribbon of gum is then cut into a pattern for sticks or small rectangular gum centers, depending on what type of gum is being made.
5. Conditioning The scored gum is then moved to a temperature-controlled environment to cool and ensure the finished gum will have the right consistency and stay fresh on store shelves.
6. Breaking and Coating (gum pellets) After tempering, the gum centers are broken into individual pieces. The pieces are then fed to a spray drier that forms the hard coating around the gum center. It tumbles the pieces while a prepared syrup mixture, made of filtered water, sweeteners, and coloring is sprayed onto the gum. This combination of tumbling and spray coating forms a candy shell around the soft gum centers.
7. Wrapping (gum sticks) After cooling and tempering, skilled operators break the sheets of sticks up into sections and feed them into the wrapping machine. In one continuous process, the wrapping machine receives and wraps the sticks, applies the outer wrapper, and seals the end of the package.
8. Packaging (gum pellets) This is where the pellet-style gum is put into the formed plastic compartments of the blister pack. The package is heat sealed using a foil a cardboard sleeve.
