Page 42 - Food & Drink March 2020

PACKAGING
Sidel installs flexible PET line for Bickford’s
Sidel has installed a complete, flexible PET line to handle sensitive beverages and carbonated soft drinks for Bickford’s Australia. Ian Ackerman writes.
both sleeve and pressure- sensitive labels.
The line has expanded manufacturing capabilities in terms of volume and type of beverages, while switching quickly from one product to another. In total, the new line now processes more than 20 different SKUs including still water, coffee
with milk, coffee with almonds, four different flavoured waters, and eight types of juices. All
can be made in 250 millilitre, 500 millilitre or one litre formats.
DESIGN AND DECORATION
Bickford senior brand manager Beverley Reeves says the company was looking to achieve an iconic shape to help the brand stand out.
Sidel designed new containers for the one litre Aqua Pura branded water, applicable both to sparkling and still water, with the latter supported by the StarLITETM base. It also developed a 600 millilitre design, which can be applied to a variety of recipes.
“Our new bottles needed to offer convenient handling and be robust enough to hold their ergonomic shape and carbonation once opened,” Reeves says.
Drinks previously packaged with hot-fill technology also
LEFT: The system can manage sensitive product and carbonated soft drink.
BELOW: The line manages both aseptic and regular PET packaging.
had to be redesigned to optimise packaging, decrease bottle weight and keep the premium brand attributes.
By changing the production set-up from hot-fill packaging to aseptic PET bottling with dry preform sterilisation, Bickford’s halved the weight of their one litre juice bottle to 32 grams and expanded its shelf life by up to eight months.
FLEXIBILITY FOR VARIETY
Bickford’s also installed a low-speed aseptic line in a move towards premium products and small-batch production.
The new versatile PET line includes Tetra Pak Processing Systems technologies for full product safety and maximised uptime from the process step.
The Aseptic Combi Predis is completed by the Capdis system for dry cap decontamination.
The CSD Combi features the compact and hygienic BlendFILL configuration, combining carbonator and filler in a single system for reduced consumption of carbon dioxide.
Gebo OptiDry, a fully washable, stainless steel drying system with a proven efficiency of over 99 per cent is integrated.
The line is now running at 12,000 bottles per hour for the aseptically filled drinks and up to 18,000 bph for the carbonated soft drink products. Production capacity will reach around
60 million bottles per year.
Kotses says being able to switch from one product to another does not compromise the sterility of production.
“The PET aseptic line runs ten hours a day. Sidel managed to keep the product in the
filler under complete food safety conditions for more than twelve hours,” he says.
Kotses says the system also reduces the need for cleaning in place and lowers maintenance costs. ✷
IN a first for Australian beverage copmany Bickford’s Australia, it has invested in aseptic technology. Sidel has installed the system with dry preform decontamination. Bickford’s diverse products made the investment necessary. It produces still and sparkling beverages, low and high acid products and has two different short bottle necks as well as two distinct decoration possibilities.
CEO and owner Angelo Kotses says the company decided to partially shift to aseptic PET bottling to optimise its production set-up and achieve a
better total cost of ownership. It is also looking to diversify its product portfolio by introducing
dairy products and plant-based alternatives, and move some beverages packaging from glass and can to PET.
Bickford’s chose Sidel for its expertise in packaging development, bottling machinery, production, and services. Its complete, versatile PET line can manage sensitive product and carbonated soft drink through an Aseptic Combi PredisTM and Combi SF300, respectively. It gives Bickford’s the benefit of a wide branding surface to apply
42 | Food&Drink business | March 2020 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au