Boon Rawd is once again on the crest of a wave. This Thai brewery group, drawing inspiration from its corporate traditions, is now back on level pegging with its competitors. After having been the undisputed market leader in this country’s beer market for about 65 years, enjoying something of a monopoly, Boon Rawd had lost substantial market shares to its competitors over the past ten years. But luckily, times change. With single-minded purposefulness, the group has invested in its chosen market and new state-of-the-art technology, thus catching up with what is meanwhile the second large brewery group in Thailand. In that same period, Boon Rawd managed to increase its output by far more than half in an expanding market.

On July 6, 2007, Hacklberg Brewery of Passau/Germany officially commissioned the new

Today, all metal cans used for packaging foods and bever­ages are lined with a thin polymer film, in order to prevent metal ions from migrating from the packaging into the product. A number of different beer samples taken from cans were tested for the presence of ortho-phenyl phenol, a compound which possesses fungicidal and bactericidal properties. The test results showed that use of this compound has increased over the past few years.

The Romanian Bere Mures brewery, part of the Heineken Group, commissioned its first canning line in the context of extensive modernisation projects. The complete plant was designed and installed by Vipoll, specialists from Slovenia.

The ZD-high-pressure compressors by Atlas Copco are the first worldwide to allow a complete oil-free inflation of PET preforms. For the bottle makers and fillers this reduces the risk of contaminating the products with oil and unclean compressed air to zero. The testing method for certification according to ISO 8573 was implemented by TÜV Rheinland on the basis of the strictest regulations currently existing and by simulating lifelike industrial operating conditions. The tests have been dealing with all possible kinds of contamination with oil, regarding liquids, aerosols and vapours. Result: Oil was not traceable under any circumstances. So Atlas Copco is the only manufacturer with a Class 0 certification for its whole oil-free compressed compressor fleet.

Sipa, a company belonging to the Zoppas Industries group, leader in the field of solutions for the beverage bottling world, has just achieved an important goal, reinforcing its position as a supplier of complete lines, from the manufacturing of PET bottles through to final packaging. On 1st September, the Company from Vittorio Veneto (Treviso), headed by Gianfranco Zoppas acquired 100% of Parma’s Berchi Group, a manufacturer of complete bottling and packaging lines.

At the Kulmbacher Brauerei AG, the new KHS filling and packaging line fills the wide variety of beer that is the brewery’s brand spectrum in both 0.33 l and 0.5 l glass bottles.

Until recently, the Gräfliche Arco-Valley Brauerei located in the Lower Bavarian town of Eichendorf, was experiencing such severe problems with foaming while filling carbonated apple and cola-based beverages that it became necessary to find a solution. The problems with foaming were serious enough that it was necessary to reduce the nominal throughput of the filler from 36 000 bottles (0.5 l) per hour to less than 20 000 for beverages prone to foam formation. In order to at last be able to fill more effectively, the new “cavitator technology” from Cavitator Systems in Landshut, Germany was installed.

As a mid-sized family business with an emphasis on tradition, the apple wine producer Possmann GmbH & Co. KG in Frankfurt expects to maintain its competitiveness through the utilization of modern state-of-the-art technology. Rapid amortization of its investments is essential. The different types of returnable bottles on the market today require a high degree of flexibility. Syscona Kontrollsysteme GmbH, located in Freudenberg, Germany was able to offer the best price to performance ratio with its newly developed empty bottle inspection equipment.

What began as a small brewpub in 1824 in Grevenstein in the state of Saarland, Germany, has expanded to become the Brauerei C. & A. Veltins GmbH & Co. Veltins focuses investment on technology as a means to optimize production while preserving product quality. The brewery has selected a new microwave-based sensor as a process solution for monitoring product levels in bright beer tanks.