Since April 2009, the 5,000th blow molder sold by Sidel has been making PET beer bottles at one of the leaders on the world beer market, Anheuser-Busch InBev. With 5,000 blow molders installed since the 1980s, or about one-half of total machines worldwide, Sidel has beaten all the records.

With this in mind, KHS has now developed InnoPET BloFill, a monoblocked stretch blow molder/filler/capper system that has a whole host of advantages. Using an InnoPET BloFill setup as opposed to traditional PET bottle manufacturing and processing equipment incurs lower costs for investment and production. There are also the added benefits of increased line efficiency, minimized space requirements, and lower operator involvement. Another innovation that speaks for the InnoPET BloFill system is the ability to only half load the stretch blow molder even within the monoblock concept. This enables even more flexible coordination of the various components in the monoblock. Another important plus point is that the half-load option can also lead to a marked decrease in investment costs.

Optimizing costs in keg filling

The experience of maintaining and repairing several hundred thousand fittings and kegs from diverse breweries and a number of different countries, that is, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Germany, provided the basis for this report. The data collected from keg maintenance and repair are described and evaluated in detail below.

The visions of a newcomer

The business unit beverage at the Huber Packaging Group is following new paths and is

Unity is strength

This familiar saying appears to fit the Tuzla Brewery which was founded in 1884 and has become the third largest brewery in Bosnia and Herzegovina today. In spite of its chequered history, it recently has experienced three particularly good events: Firstly, Hilmo Selimovic, president and majority shareholder of the Sarajevo Brewery, also became the majority shareholder of the Tuzla Brewery in 2006. Secondly, the brewery has realised high sales and an associated increase in turnover in recent years. Thirdly, the company has recently invested in innovative KHS technology as a basis for continuing success.

High speed with lightweight bottles

Obviously, it’s not the water cascading down the Niagara Falls that finds its way into the bottles of the Niagara Bottling Co. But the choice of name was a clever one, symbolising as it does the power and purity of the American epitome for water as such. For Andrew Peykoff Sr., it was also instrumental in making the American dream of “milkman to millionaire” come true for himself and his family. Today, his son Andy Peykoff II is at the helm of the company, which with its corporate creed of high quality, low price, extraordinary service has boasted average annual growth rates of over 40 percent during the past ten years and is nowadays selling around five billion (5 000 000 000) fills a year.

Preliminary tests were conducted in order to develop a standard contamination, which can be used to analyse the mechanical effects of rinsing. These showed that a 70 % mustard ethanol suspension, dried slightly, is suitable to fulfil this task. In a systematic decision-making process, the conductivity measurement was selected as the method to determine the residual contamination. The performed measurement systems analysis confirmed the suitability of the used Conductometer for this measuring task. The design of the experimental plan as well as the evaluation and graphical display of the results was realized with the software Visual X-Sel® 10.0 in order to attain a large amount of information with a minor effort.

New palletizing technology at the Mauritius Brewery

The Mauritius Brewery, located in Zwickau, Germany recently purchased new palletizers for use in their bottling plant. The contract for the new palletizing system was awarded to the equipment manufacturer Beyer based in Rosswein in Saxony. The new, high performance palletizing technology is described in detail below.

The globally operating Teka-Group including the companies Thielmann AG, Portinox S.A., FSB and Comet is expanding its keg sector. HW Brewery Services GmbH, whose core responsibility is keg-services takes charge of the fields keg and fitting maintenance, keg neutralisation and logistics in volume reduction on behalf of Teka. Since Teka has subsidiaries in England, Spain, Belgium and Austria and HW Brewery Service has offices in Benelux, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovak Republic their customers have access to a region-wide service network.

Glass is the first choice food and beverage packaging material for German and European consumers. This is confirmed in a recent study commissioned by the Brussels-based Fédération Européenne du Verre d’ Emballage (Feve), the European Container Glass Federation, which was presented at an online press conference on 20 April. A total of 6,200 consumers in 12 European countries were surveyed in what is assumed to be one of the largest studies ever conducted by the packaging industry.