Page 43 - Food & Drink March 2020

Asahi installs new KHS stretch blow moulder
ASAHI Soft Drinks has fired up a new KHS InnoPET Blomax Series V stretch blow moulder at its mineral water bottling plant in Rokko, Japan.
It was the first company to invest in the new series.
Asahi was looking for a machine that could fill PET bottles to meet customer demand for a simple, safe, and sustainable container.
The Blomax Series V can cut energy consumption by up to 40 per cent, according to KHS.
The new stretch blow moulder achieves this through the implementation of a new heating concept.
The near infrared heater
centrally installed in the closed reflector tunnel forms the nucleus of this.
In the heater, the preforms pass the centrally arranged heating units to both the left and the right.
KHS has supplemented its Airback Plus air recycling system with a new air management system. This, the company claims, can make for an up to 40 per cent savings in compressed air.
The system uses the residual air from the blowing and recycling process to replace a separate air drier in the base mould area and in the blow wheel, which can also yield energy savings.
Doppelgasse – Asahi Soft Drinks needed a machine to fill PET bottles.
KHS head of area sales and product management for Asia-Pacific Matthias Gernhuber says it is a great honour that a company such as Asahi trusts the reliability of KHS machines.
“For saving energy in the interest of the environment and the demand for product quality
are of especial importance to the Japanese,” he says.
Convinced by the system performance and in order to meet its own requirements and keep up with its rate of growth, Asahi recently announced that plans for a second stretch blow moulder from the new series are already underway. ✷
short delays and bottlenecks that will otherwise reduce throughput.”
4 Pines chief brewer Chris Willcock says cans are an increasingly relevant section of the craft beer market.
“They're a vessel very well-suited to a variety of drinking occasions and something we really needed to provide to our customers alongside our diverse range of bottled beer products,” he says.
“The challenge at Brookvale has been our restricted space, which makes it impossible to build a second pack line exclusively for standard and sleek can filling. Off-site filling was an option, but it's expensive and elevates our risk of problems with product quality.”
Willcock says 4 Pines takes its use of resources
seriously. “Whatever
filling line solution, we
came up with needed to reduce our water and power consumption.”
4 Pines has joined its parent company, AB InBev, in its plan to become a 100 per cent renewable energy brewery. ✷
Cans are an important part of the craft beer sector.
ABOVE: 4 Pines’ Brookvale brewery.
PACKAGING
Brewer to install filler to handle bottles and cans
4 Pines Brewing Company will soon be putting its famous beer into bottles and cans
on a new filling line, to be supplied by Foodmach, at its Brookvale facility.
The brewery is due to start up its GEA Vipoll All in One filler in September. The machine is a combined rinser/filler/capper/ seamer in a single monoblock. It can accommodate carbonated and still beverages – either hot
or cold – and it can fill glass, PET, and cans in several formats. The filler can work at a pace of up to 30,000 containers per hour. It also has the potential to reduce the energy used in bottling and canning beer and reduce water use.
Foodmach designed a medium-speed packaging line around the filler. This packaging line includes a new bottle/can depalletiser;
traceability and inspection systems; conveying; and a line control system to link all existing equipment.
Earle Roberts, CEO of Foodmach, says, “We use our experience from working with high-speed bottling and canning lines at 2000 cans per minute to ensure that we get the buffering and accumulation right on any speed line. We've designed 4 Pines Brookvale to minimise those
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