The one category on this site where removing water is almost beside the point. Candy starts nearly dry; the cycle exists to make it explode.
Candy runs 5–20% moisture. A 1,000 lb batch might give up 31–184 lb of water — a fraction of a fruit batch.
The small amount of water inside the candy turns to vapour under vacuum and forces the matrix to expand, producing the crunch and the volume the category sells. The machine is not being asked to remove a lot of water; it is being asked to control pressure and temperature precisely while a physical transformation happens.
Which means sizing this application on water load alone gets you the wrong machine. Chamber volume and vacuum control matter more than condenser capacity here — the inverse of every other page on this site.
Candy is where most operations discover the gap between a hobby dryer and production equipment.
Volume expansion means finished product occupies several times the space it went in as, so chamber volume and tray count become the binding constraint rather than weight. Loading practice changes accordingly: you are budgeting space for what the product will become, not for what it is.
Packaging follows the same logic. Expanded candy is fragile and hygroscopic, so the window between chamber and seal is both a breakage risk and a moisture risk.
Worth noting because most equipment conversations in this space are U.S.-only.
Spanish-language demand for freeze dried candy is substantial — dulces liofilizados carries around 1,900 searches a month in Mexico alone. If your market is bilingual, your packaging and your product pages probably should be.