How hazelnut spread is made
A big brand of hazelnut spread is mostly sugar and palm oil, with about 50 hazelnuts in each jar.
- stations
- 7
- things upstream
- 26
- raw sources
- 14
- steps from the ground
- 7
The short version
Hazelnuts are checked, cleaned and roasted, with air jets blowing out bad nuts. They are blended with cocoa powder, sugar, skimmed milk and vanilla flavor in big tanks. Palm oil and an emulsifier are added so the paste stays spreadable at room temperature and does not separate in the jar.
-
Cut open and inspect
On arrival the nuts get a first quality check. A guillotine chops some to show the inside so inspectors can judge whether they are good enough.
Goes in -
Clean and roast
Hazelnuts are cleaned and roasted, which develops their flavor.
-
Blow out the bad nuts
A computer-controlled blast of air knocks bad nuts out of the stream. This second check keeps every jar the same in color and taste.
-
Blend the base
Nuts, cocoa powder, sugar, skimmed milk powder and vanilla flavor are combined in a large tank until they form a paste. Cocoa powder comes from beans that were roasted and pressed to squeeze out their butter.
-
Add the fat
Modified palm oil goes in to keep the paste soft but solid at room temperature, replacing the cocoa butter that was pressed out of the beans.
Goes in -
Bind and smooth it
Whey powder acts as a binder, and lecithin helps oil and the other ingredients emulsify, so the paste turns spreadable and does not split.
-
Jar and seal
The finished paste is filled into jars and sealed.
Goes in
Worth repeating
- Each 220-gram jar of Nutella uses about 50 hazelnuts.
- Ferrero, the maker of Nutella, uses 25 percent of the global supply of hazelnuts.
- The spread started in Piedmont, Italy, where hazelnuts were plentiful and cocoa was scarce after the war, so makers stretched cocoa with nut paste.
- In 2012 a French proposal to raise the palm oil tax was nicknamed the Nutella tax.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and hazelnut spread starts as these 14 raw sources.
Everything it is made of See it on the map
Open the whole family tree
Keep walking
Sources
Cite this page: "How hazelnut spread is made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/hazelnut-spread