Food & Beverage Asia Jun/July 2021

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44 PROCESSING AND PACKAGING A harmonised solution In mid-2019, Vitaqua GmbH put its seventh PET line into operation at its plant in Breuna, Germany – and like all of its predecessors, it’s a turnkey line from Krones. It’s the first to be used as a multipurpose line as all of the others run just one product in one PET bottle shape and size. Besides the installation of Line 7, the company also needed to restructure all of the plant’s peripherals since everything was configured for the existing six lines. That, too, was handled by Krones. Plant Manager Stefan Thöne The family-owned enterprise Altmühltaler Mineralbrunnen originally emerged from a mid-tier brewery by the name of Schäffbräu in Treuchtlingen, Germany. In recent years, however, it has specialised entirely in producing and bottling mineral water and soft drinks in single-use PET bottles for discounters and store brands. The company is now one of Germany’s largest beverage producers, with four production sites, in the country’s south (Altmühltaler Mineralbrunnen GmbH, Treuchtlingen), center (Vitaqua GmbH, Breuna, and Heil- und Mineralquellen Germete GmbH, Warburg), and east (Brandenburger Urstromquelle GmbH, Baruth). When the Vitaqua plant in Breuna was completed in 2007, it was considered one of Europe’s most state-of-theart beverage production and logistics facilities. Krones served as general contractor, and planned, built, and installed everything (except the building itself) in just under a year’s time. The project included • the turnkey delivery of the entire process technology, • a high-bay warehouse with 51,000 pallet slots, • internal logistics, • the digital connectivity of the entire plant, • and four PET bottling lines, each rated at 43,200 containers per hour. That enabled the newly established plant, which takes its water from the hills around Kassel, Germany, to fill around four million containers per day. But that wasn’t the end of it. As planned from the outset, Vitaqua continued to expand its capacities in the years that followed, adding two further Krones PET bottling lines that would be used exclusively for water. In 2014 and 2018, respectively, Krones updated Lines 1 and 2, increasing their individual capacities from 43,200 to 63,000 0.5L/h. And yet, even that was not enough to keep up with demand. So, Vitaqua decided to add another PET line – now its seventh and again from Krones. Designed to handle four different bottle formats ranging from 0.75 to 1.5L at a speed of 40,000 bottles per hour, this new line is the first to be used as a multipurpose line. “Strictly speaking, if we include the two upgrades, Krones has now installed nine turnkey lines in our plant,” said Plant Manager Stefan Thöne, who has helped “build” the Breuna facility since its beginnings. “In addition, in 2020, we also retrofitted all of the lines with new Contiroll labelers, so they now all use the same gluing system.” FOOD & BEVERAGE ASIA JUNE / JULY <strong>2021</strong>
PROCESSING AND PACKAGING 45 But even so, the contract award wasn’t a done deal: “We’re almost an entirely Krones-built operation, but Krones still has to prove itself with each bid.” FLEXIBLE, TROUBLE-FREE PRODUCTION PET line number 7: • Contiform 3 Speed stretch blowmolder with PET-View inspection system • AirCo air conveyor • Contiflow mixer • Modulfill VFS filler in a cleanroom • The latest-generation Accutable dynamic buffer system • Linadry container dryer • Contiroll labeler • Variopac Pro FS-7 packer • Modulpal Pro 1AD palletizer with a Robobox T-GS grouping system with high-level infeed The new turnkey line bottles both still and carbonated water as well as carbonated soft drinks (CSDs) and went into operation in mid-2019. A number of unique points are worth noting. At Vitaqua, the blow-molder on each line is linked to the filler via an air conveyor. “It’s our ‘house philosophy’ and it has worked well for us so far,” explained Thöne. Besides trouble-free operation, flexibility is a priority: “Since we run four different containers on this line, it was important that the Contiform blow-molder be equipped with quick-change capability. We can now change over from the smallest bottle size to the largest in just 75 minutes.” The new, third-generation Accutable buffer system was installed in this line for the first time In addition, the cleanroom that houses the filler also has three integrated cap supply systems that feed into the screw capper. Switching between normal screw caps, flat caps, and sports caps is done automatically. “This is the first line on which we’ve been able to handle sports caps at all,” said Thöne. The company buys the sports caps, while the normal screw caps and flat caps are produced on site in Breuna and even supplied to the group’s other plants. In addition, Altmühltaler Mineralbrunnen has been producing its own PET FOOD & BEVERAGE ASIA JUNE / JULY <strong>2021</strong>
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Page 15 and 16: MARKET INSIGHTS 13 The rapid growth
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Page 55 and 56: FIRST LOOKS 53 Rapid Parts on Deman
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Page 62: 60 ADVERTISERS’ INDEX COMPANY PAG

Food & Beverage Asia Jun/July 2021

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