Breweries are currently increasingly confronted with a new challenge arising from continuing efforts of marketing departments to achieve greater product differentiation. Individually styled bottles on the market for filling the various products of a brewery create new framework conditions for handling of empties. In this article, a new integrated sorting line from Krones is presented.

As keg equipment from KHS Till is operating successfully in four Russian breweries, Heineken has now again opted for KHS Till keg equipment for the operation in St. Petersburg. This is a reflection of increasing sales to the catering trade in Russia. The plant is designed for 140 kegs per hour, it can handle 30 and 50 l kegs and can, if necessary, be extended to double the initial capacity. With an 8% market share and 6 million hl beer sales, Heineken is currently number 3 in the Russian beer market. ..

Up until such time as they are sold and used, beverage cans usually stand open in stores, on shelves and in similar areas. Impurities such as e.g. dust can easily be deposited on the can top.
The general consumer habit of drinking directly from the opened can, without first cleaning the contact area, is anything but hygienic.
A newly developed hygiene protection for beverage cans from the HN Group is a fully recyclable, pressed aluminium foil which customers know from bottleneck labelling. This provides every possibility of carrying print. Advertising such as thermo-colours, internal printing, watermarking can be carried out without any problem. The aluminium foils are delivered cut to size and withdrawn singly from a label stacker..

Label printers, packaging designers and marketing specialists have, in recent months, entered the best examples of their handiwork in an international label competition, the Golden Label Award. Of the more than 700 submissions, an international expert jury, consisting of printing experts, marketing specialists and packaging designers, made a pre-selection of those paper labels that achieved the highest points in all evaluation criteria.
The four criteria being evaluated related to promotional effect, creative design and emotional impression, printing technique and finishing standard as well as its implementation and innovative or special applications in conjunction with material, metallic colours, halftone processes etc. ...

More attention is now being paid to Quality Control as problems due to inadequately cleaned beer and beverage containers, bottles and kegs have been occurring more and more frequently in recent years. For example, residues can have an effect on the taste and lead to microbiological problems. Monitoring of the cleanliness of the packaging is becoming an indispensable measure in order to avoid adversely affecting the product and expensive recall campaigns.

Today’s technologies make it possible to carefully monitor the cleaning process of bottles and kegs/casks. As part of its comprehensive range of quality and monitoring instruments for laboratories, and for process monitoring in the brewing and beverage industry, Haffmans B.V. ...

Side impact sensitivity is an important quality criterion of bottle closures, especially for ­carbonated beverages. Bottle closures together with the materials they are made from may differ substantially in terms of side impact sensitivity. Warsteiner Brauerei Haus Cramer KG, Warstein, has ­developed a new test method for measuring this important parameter in the packaging area.

Lateral impact sensitivity of closures may cause leakages when bottles topple over during transport in the filling process or at customers’ premises, e.g. when being transported horizontally in cool bags or when placing them in ice boxes and refrigerators. Up to that time, no generally valid, reproducible test method existed.g. beech).g. beech) (closure pointing downwards). ...

Aseptic cold bottling plants are being ­increasingly installed in non-alcoholic beverage operations. This can be attributed to more stringent hygiene requirements due to the multiplicity of new beverage brands and associated new, innovative, microbiologically sensitive products and the move away from cold sterilisation agents. Furthermore, quality specifications that have to be met despite dropping hot filling and increased use of PET and PEN bottles or suitable alternatives have provided added impetus.

Commercial flash pasteurisation plants have already been covered in an earlier article in Brauwelt International (4/04, 236 - 241). This part, dealing with plant configuration, describes the theoretical background and concepts and also details the various production areas. 1). 2)..

The main conveyor is the most critical mechanical component of the tunnel pasteuriser. In view of this, and the fact that approx. 80 - 85% of total pasteuriser downtime is related to conveyor belt problems, it is evident that conventional conveyor solutions have not been optimal. Additionally, the integrity of the conveyor belt is critical for an optimum PU control because the control system relies on input on the exact position of the products in the pasteuriser. Belt elongations will disturb input and are therefore damaging to product quality. Temperatures in pasteurisers may vary between 3 °C and 85 °C.
The tunnel pasteuriser conveyor must, at the same time, be very flexible, i.e. able to handle a wide number of product and container types.e. 1:50.000. ...

The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (Fraunhofer Society FhG) coordinates applied research. It was not a great surprise that many participants from Fraunhofer sister institutes were present at this year’s annual meeting of the Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging (IVV) held in Freising on May 4th and 5th and that there was reference to successful research cooperation between the various institutes.

Prof. Dr.
Plastics, the real focal point of the annual meeting, are ideal packaging materials for food. In view of the wide spectrum of different substances with quality determining characteristics being filled, the packaging has to fulfil a wide range of specifications. Plastic bottles for beverages are making advances. ...

At Brau, Metallocraft, which has been developing precision engineered draught beer dispense products since 1972, will be launched under its new name, TRUpour.
As TRUpour, the company aims at becoming an industry leader with its three core product platforms: "FOBs, FONTs, FAUCETs".
The first FOB detector was patented in 1980. TRUpour, the world leader now in stainless steel FOBs with 100% market penetration in the mature Irish draught beer market, aims at continued growth in its export markets.
The company designed their first FONT in 2000, incorporating and patenting the unique "COOLit" tap chilling function which guarantees to eliminate warm beer taps..