Tableted candies and mints are an offshoot of the pharmaceutical industry that makes pills. The same accuracy that produces just the right dose in a lozenge or tablet for medicinal purposes also makes mints efficiently with the right distribution of flavor and breath freshener. Tablets are made with rotary presses that use a rotating die table and compression rollers to turn out as many as 10,000 mints per minute.

● The ingredients for mints arrive at the factory in powder form. They are granulated in a mixing and bonding method that helps them flow through a tablet press. The process involves pulverizing (pounding) them to a fine consistency, mixing (most often in a dry process, although wet mixing can be used), compacting the ingredients, sizing the finished grains (sorting out the coarse particles), mixing the ingredients, and flowing them into the tableting machine. The moisture content is controlled throughout the process (whether it is wet or dry), and the granules are dried on bed dryers (flat systems) or rotary dryers. Mixing—one of the last steps—is the process in which flavors and active ingredients like breath fresheners are added for the most uniform distribution. Lubricants are mixed last so they coat all the other ingredients well.

● The prepared, granulated, mixed ingredients are conveyed to the tableting machine. While this sounds straightforward, the conveyors cannot have any bends or turns that might sort the materials, and temperature and moisture have to be strictly controlled along the route. Some ingredients, particularly the lubricants, begin to separate from the other ingredients if conditions aren't correct. Some flavors like grape react with sugars if there is too much moisture in the air and begin to turn brown; gelatin also browns if conditions are too warm or dry.

● The rotary tablet press consists of four punches that move along an upper belt paired to four dies that move along a bottom belt. The belts themselves are continuously turned around large rollers. The punches and dies are pushed up toward each other and pulled down by adjustable cams. As the ingredients enter the rotary tablet press, the granulated ingredients are channeled into a feeder (the upper punch) that fills a die seated in the bottom of the pair. The cavity of the die has to be filled with the volume of granulated ingredients. The second stage of the press adjusts the weight and scrapes excess material off the top of the die. In the third, compression stage, the cams drive the upper punch and the lower die together, compressing the ingredient into a tablet. The punch and die have been designed to have the shape of the breath mint and possibly its name cut into it, so the compressed result has the identity of the mint firmly stamped in place. In the fourth step, the lower cam pushes out (ejects or extrudes) the stamped mint and the upper part pushes it out of the press where it is collected in a bin.

● The bin funnels the compressed mint tablets to the next process. This may be panning or packaging.

Extruded or batch process mints

● Some mints are made much like hard candies, and are cooked as a batch that flows in a continuous process that shapes and sizes the batch ingredients into the shape of the mint. In a dry, uncooked process, a dry dough with a sugar base is made. The batch or the dry dough is funneled through a roller with a general shape much like a pointed ice cream cone but with the opening shaped to the desired form of the candy, perhaps a triangle, a diamond, or a barrel. Either the cooked batch or the extruded dry dough is forced through this roller, and each candy length is cut as the ingredient emerges. Extruded dough mints can be recognized by their irregular surface.

The panning process

● Panning is not usually used to make an entire candy or mint but to give a mint a finished coating. Hollow globe-shaped pans with a hole in one side are made of copper and are rotated much like small cement mixers so the hole stays angled upward. Mints made by compression, batching, or extrusion are placed in relatively small quantities in the pans. Sugar, flavors, and colors are added; as the pan rotates, a hard shell of the sugar forms on the outside of the mint. In the same process or another panning operation, wax or a polishing agent may be put in the pan with the mints to give them an attractive luster. The rotation of the pan can also help develop the finished shape of the mint; the oval shape of many of the minimints is created during panning.