KHS has optimized its Innopack Kisters Basic packaging machine. Identical servo motors with integrated servo controllers are now used for all function units. This reduces and facilitates spare part stockkeeping considerably.

In only 50 years, South Korea has transformed itself from an agrarian society into one of the world’s major industrialized nations. This high growth rate places it in the ranks of the East Asian tiger economies, beside Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Per capita gross income in South Korea is currently around 19 000 USD (13 365 EUR; 1960: 100 USD). Naturally, this torrid pace of development has resulted in altered consumer patterns, and consumption of alcoholic beverages is no exception. Beside the traditional alcoholic beverage soju, the consumers in the 1970s also began developing a taste for beer, which prior to that time had been virtually unaffordable. Oriental Brewery is one of the main beneficiaries of beer’s popularity. The company has recently succeeded in winning back significant market share, and it is now number one in the South Korean beer market. “The fine quality of our beer (along with an effective marketing strategy) was the prime contributor in our successful campaign to regain market leadership,” says Charles Park, Executive Director Oriental Brewery Company. “To maintain this level of product quality out into the future, we recently decided to make an additional investment in KHS filling technology and two KHS canning lines.”

Thiele Technologies introduces its new Salwasser Model ITL 300 Integrated Top Load Case Packer. The ITL 300 is a fully automatic case packer capable of top loading product into RSC or HSC cases. The sleek new design features a low, ergonomic knock down case magazine and a small overall footprint making the ITL 300 ideal for nearly any production line.

The Lipetskpivo Brewery in the city of Lipetsk in Central Russia is rather different to its competitors in the brewing sector. When asked about his personal recipe for success, the brewery’s managing director Vyacheslav Markov replied: “We gear our enterprise towards what consumers want.” Lipetskpivo is the first brewery worldwide to invest in a fully automatic KHS Petainer keg line. “We’d been looking for a concept like this for some time”, states Markov, “partly because we wanted to save our clients and ourselves from having to return kegs, and also to make keg handling easier.” Read more about the application and handling of this Petainer keg line in the following article.

Specialist plastics packaging technology business Petainer has developed its ‘greenest ever’ refillable bottle using more than 25 per cent post-consumer ‘one-way’ recycled PET (PolyEthylene Terephthalate) plastic which has the same performance characteristics as a refillable bottle made entirely from virgin material. It gives the same number of ‘round trips’, has the same top-load strength which allows it to be stacked in the same way as other refillable bottles, and provides the same level of retention of CO₂ in carbonated soft drinks.

With its latest SBO Compact2, Sidel consolidated a reliable and robust linear blow-molding machine that improves bottle quality.

Glass bottles have already experienced many trends – now it is premiumisation. This is currently one of the key developments affecting the beer and NAB market: Attractive design can turn a glass bottle into a real eye-catcher – using colour, bottle shape, embossing and decoration options. Although the basic production methods for glass bottles have been more or less the same for centuries, the importance of innovation has significantly grown.

Committed to quality for 150 years – that’s the König brewery’s philosophy in a nutshell. König Pilsener, König Pilsener Alkoholfrei (alcohol-free) and König Pilsener Radler (shandy) are three premium products on the market which have to satisfy the company’s own high quality requirements. With the latest investment in shrink packer and tray shrink packer lines for the existing canning line, the brewery again chose KHS technology, because, as Guido Christiani, König brewery Production/Engineering Director explains, this includes both know-how and customer service.

Beverage packaging must be practical, hygienic, free of defects and safe. It must also preserve the integrity of the product while meeting the needs and desires of customers and consumers. But this is not all: The environmental impact of beverage packaging has become a decisive factor in production, use and disposal. Technological developments continue to make ongoing optimization possible. Trends in the further improvement of environmentally friendly beverage packaging include conserving the use of raw materials, increasing the reuse of packaging and boosting the portion of recyclable materials in packaging. In addition to this, techniques using high-pressure in conjunction with sustainable materials have been employed.

Just the refreshing “zish” on opening a beverage can transforms it for many consumers into a cult object. Many brewers look upon the round metal packaging as a “mini keg” – protected from light and oxygen, it protects the quality of the beer. It is no surprise that the beverage can is becoming increasingly popular for consumers, also in the German market. In the past year, countrywide can sales increased by 46 percent to about 930 million. The popularity of the beverage can is not only its ability to rediscover itself anew. Cans are more practical nowadays, they offer more stylish designs and have better environmental properties compared to their predecessors of some years ago.