This is a film made by Rowntree’s employee Ken Clough of the production of Black Magic chocolates at the Rowntree Mackintosh factory in York.  It shows in detail each stage of the process. The film begins showing a white liquid emerging from a machine and going into a metal bowl.  Another bowl of hot liquid, possibly toffee, is poured onto a table and flattened before a white dust is poured on top.  Having slightly hardened, this is then rolled over several times to mix it all together, and...

This is a film made by Rowntree’s employee Ken Clough of the production of Black Magic chocolates at the Rowntree Mackintosh factory in York.  It shows in detail each stage of the process. The film begins showing a white liquid emerging from a machine and going into a metal bowl.  Another bowl of hot liquid, possibly toffee, is poured onto a table and flattened before a white dust is poured on top.  Having slightly hardened, this is then rolled over several times to mix it all together, and taken off.  Elsewhere, this mixture is put through a rolling machine where it is flattened and imprinted with squares. Now hardened, this is broken into pieces.  In a different part of the factory a similar process is being done with a brown toffee looking substance.  Here, the broken pieces are put through a rotating mess wire drum, and then into trays which are stacked up.  The filmmaker shows some of the hand equipment used.    A brown liquid, possibly caramel, is being mixed in a large metal rotating drum.  This is then scooped into metal containers and transferred to another rotating machine where it is folded several times by hand. Again this is rolled on a table and fed through a machine and cut into small square pieces.  A similar process is gone through with some more brown substance, possibly chocolate, which is made into rolls and put into a machine to emerge as a fine liquid which is poured onto a moving  convey belt and cut into squares by women workers in white overalls.  These pieces are then stacked on trays.  They are then taken to be cut into individual squares using roller cutters. Elsewhere a pink liquid is poured onto a conveyer belt and emerges as individual drops.  Further along the conveyer belt a group of women place cherries on each drop by hand.  They then pass through another machine which covers them with more of the pink liquid.  As they emerge from the machine a man ensures that the lines of sweets are at the correct distance from each other using a measuring rod.  Again these are transferred onto trays and are stacked.  These are then taken to another conveyer belt where they are covered in chocolate and given a little swirl on top.  A woman ensures that each sweet is correctly positioned as they come out of the machine.  Two women do some paper work.  Elsewhere another kind of chocolate are having a chocolate filling squeezed onto them on a conveyer belt by lines of women on either side.  The women workers top up their piping horns from a machine dispensing liquid chocolate. Then a woman worker weighs individual sweets and places them into configurations on a tray.  Elsewhere two women workers empty trays of chocolates from one tray onto another. Then lines of women place the different kinds of chocolate into black plastic trays as they travel along a conveyer belt.  These trays get automatically divided into two, continue their journey along the conveyer belt and are placed into Black Magic boxes automatically by machine, with the dividing section placed on by hand.  As each box continues along the conveyer belt, a machine places a slip into each one and another machine closes the lid.  A woman then manually puts the boxes of Black Magic into larger packing boxes, and they are stacked on pallets. The film then returns back to a long line of women placing individual chocolates into boxes by hand, and the film comes to an end.