New generation of can fillers at Pilsner Urquell

The can is currently undergoing a clear growth on the European market and proving very popular among consumers, with beer and soft drinks in particular the canned beverages of choice. In the next few years leading beverage can manufacturers forecast a further growth in sales on the international markets. Reason enough, then, for brewery Pilsner Urquell to continue to market its world-famous specialty beer of the same name in cans and to invest in a new can filler.

Gantry robots in the brewing and beverage industry

Packaging diversity in the brewing and beverage industry has been on the increase for years. For example, whereas all German brewers filled more or less the same beer crates with identical Euro bottles in times past, one nowadays finds a colourful mix of bottle shapes and packaging types. In any event, this plus in versatility involves more changeovers, in particular more sorting and repacking costs, in a nutshell: machinery and equipment has to comply with more complex specifications. Nevertheless, packers and palletisers in the brewing and beverage industry must, at the same time, be reliable, effective and economical. This circumscribes an environment in which freely programmable and flexibly adaptable robot solutions score – especially when in gantry-frame design.

One system for all containers

If a brewery wishes to fill typical reusable kegs and various disposable kegs, experience has shown that they will need substantial manpower or even different filling and cleaning systems in order to accomplish that. It will quickly become apparent that costs will skyrocket, not just for the machinery but also for the training and conversion effort. As a result, the work load strongly increases as well. Using the example of Kiuchi Brewery, Naka, Ibaraki, Japan, this article introduces a system that is able to simply and flexibly process various container types.

The sign of the lion

For several decades Boon Rawd Brewery in Thailand has relied on KHS as its partner for innovative filling and packaging technology. Only recently the company invested in no fewer than three water filling systems. One KHS PET line went to the bottling plant in Wang Noi in the center of Thailand, with a PET and a glass line being delivered to the Surat Thani site in the south of the country.

Groundbreaking ceremony for long-term corporate development: the KHS Group, a manufacturer of filling and packaging systems, began building a new production shop at its site in Hamburg, Germany, at the end of September 2015. With it Group companies KHS Corpoplast GmbH and KHS Plasmax GmbH will gain an extra 2,500 sqm.

KHS GmbH can look back on a very successful business year: in 2014 the manufacturer of filling and packaging systems for the beverage, food and non-food industries increased its sales by 5.8% to EUR 1.08 billion. This was chiefly thanks to the expansion of its service business which the company is continuing to build up this year. With many innovations KHS also cemented its position as one of the market and technology leaders in the last year.

The US market is currently growing due to the trend towards regional “craft breweries” and the increasing use of KEGs for soft drinks and wine. Fast delivery times are therefore becoming more and more important. To accommodate this, Schäfer has set up its own subsidiary in the USA, Schäfer Container Systems North America, Inc. (SCS NA) in March 2015.

Krones AG, Neutraubling, Germany, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of beverage filling and packaging technology, has purchased a 100 % stake in the Gernep Group, Barbing, Germany. As an international vendor of labellers in the low and medium output ranges, Gernep offers customised solutions. Besides the beverage industry, the company’s principal markets are food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Krones is thus strengthening its activities in these market segments.

With its new spare parts service, Sidel, one of the leading global providers of PET solutions for liquid packaging, is aiming to encourage a more proactive approach to inventory management of its high-quality original parts among its customers.

Zero-waste packaging: The Carlsberg Circular Community

The Circular Economy is regularly making the headlines. Designing zero-waste products with future life-cycles in mind provides a logical way to mitigate rising demand in a world of limited resources. The Carlsberg Circular Community is bringing partners together to develop innovative solutions that, it hopes, will benefit business, society, and the environment in equal measure.