Anuga FoodTec 2015: Spotlight on innovative beverage technology

The once classic boundaries between breweries and soft drinks manufacturers are becoming increasingly blurred. In recent years, the major breweries have developed into universal beverage suppliers. A further aspect is the increasing variety of packaging variants and materials. Nowadays, therefore, flexibility is just as important for a filling machine as its speed. New developments and innovative approaches are to be found in many areas, as Anuga FoodTec, the international supplier fair for the food and beverage industry, taking place in Cologne from 24-27 March 2015, will demonstrate.

In 2012, German drinks technology suppliers produced machinery worth 2.2 billion Euro. Including the strong demand for stretch blow-moulding machines for plastic containers, experts such as Volker Kronseder, Executive Board Chairman of mechanical engineering company Krone, estimate the industry's turnover here in Germany at around five billion Euro. Kronseder knows what he is talking about. Almost one bottle in every four opened worldwide has been filled using plant supplied by the Neutraubling-based company.

With an export ratio of more than 80 per cent, German beverage technology continues to flourish on the world market and can count on its customers' considerable appetite for investment in 2015 as well. An important driver are the burgeoning middle classes in the emerging countries of Asia and Latin America, where the demand for beverages is increasing in line with prosperity - and with it the need for filling machines. Whereas in China the focus is on high continuous performance, the demand in the saturated European markets is for flexible plants, permitting quick and frequent product changeovers. They enable producers to serve niche markets efficiently. Short set-up times can only be achieved by electronically controlled machines. The plants are characterised by their high degree of automation and the fact that each component has its own autonomous power unit.

In the beverage industry, clever technology doesn't just ensure high standards of hygiene but also helps to husband resources. This is already evident in the details. For example in the question, how the beer gets into the bottle. Previously, carbon dioxide was the preferred means of removing oxygen from the bottle. The "balloon style filler", on the other hand, dispenses withCO2. A plastic balloon is introduced into the empty bottle by a filling valve and inflated, expelling the oxygen from the bottle. The beer flows into the bottle between the balloon and the bottle wall, thus once again deflating the balloon, which is then removed from the bottle. Whereas it used to take five seconds to fill a half litre bottle, the balloon technology performs the same task in one second.

It is above all premium products such as juices made of pieces of fruit or pulp that require premium technologies. To fill these as carefully as possible, it is advisable to separate the juice and the fruit content - for example using the dual-stream process. The trick is to have the juice and fruit pieces follow separate routes throughout the entire product handling process up to the point of filling. That way each component receives the most appropriate treatment. Only in the bottle do the two components meet - blending to form a first class beverage.

The market the world over is moving towards still and alcohol-free beverages. And demand the world over is growing precisely for such beverages in PET containers, accounting for more than 40 per cent of drinks packaging. A trend with technological consequences because ever more beverage bottlers are opting to invest in a PET line. They are confronted in the process with the question of all questions: cold aseptic or hot filling? As before, cold aseptic is held to be the nec plus ultra, whether filling PET or glass containers. Contrary to hot filling, it is used at low temperatures. Beverage, container and closure are sterilised separately and come together under clean room conditions. This technique enables sensitive juices to be filled in a microbiologically safe and gentle process. Admittedly greater effort and expense is required to minimise the risk of recontamination.

This contrasts with hot filling, where beverage, bottle and closure are heated and made conservable together. Lower investment costs and the latest advances in hot filling are again making the competing process a contender for beverage bottlers. The logical consequence: new, flexible fillers lend themselves both to hot filling in PET and glass bottles and to the cold filling of still beverages. Coca-Cola has given itself this flexibility for its Surabaya production plant in the east of the Indonesian island of Java. The company fills both hotfill products using the hotfill technique as well as soft drinks using the cold technique in two virtually identically configured filling plants. The two plants together confer the opportunity to decide freely how much of which beverage to fill and when.