tic filling of high-acid, carbonated or still beverages? This was accomplished by installing a Contiform Bloc with a Contipure preform-decontamination unit in conjunction with an isolator and a new type of combined filling valve, suitable for handling both still and carbonated beverages. Krones has now successfully put this new technology in place for the very first time at the Austrian Pfanner company, a producer of fruit juices and ice teas.According to the Canadean market research institute, the Austrian Pfanner brand is the Number Two among Europe’s ice-tea brands. PET-bottled ice tea is predestined to be filled aseptically if the intention is to do without preservatives. So logically enough, Pfanner has in its Upper Austrian plant at Enns now installed a Krones Contipure system with preform sterilisation for microbiologically safe bottling of high-acid, still or carbonated beverages.
Successful with fruit
But ice tea is just one drink out of the many that underpin Pfanner’s continuing success. The family firm, meanwhile in the safe hands of the clan’s fifth generation, is also one of Europe’s biggest fruit processors: apples, pears and red fruit form the foundation for fruit juices, fruit squashes, fruit-juice-based drinks, and ice teas, whose total production output came to around 450 million litres in 2013. Pfanner achieved over 80 per cent of its 255-million-euro turnover outside Austria, exporting to over 70 of the planet’s countries. The main sales markets for its 200 or more different products are Germany, Italy and Austria, but also eastern Europe, where Pfanner sells 13 per cent of its production output. Total turnover has risen three times over during the past 15 years.
The company’s parent plant is located in Lauterach in Vorarlberg, with its largest facility operating at Enns in Upper Austria. In addition, Pfanner owns a production plant in Hamburg for the German market, and a fruit-puree-making factory at Policoro in southern Italy, where peaches, apricots and nectarines are processed, and 1.5-litre and 2.0-litre soft packages are filled, plus further subsidiaries and sales companies in the Ukraine, Czechia, Bulgaria and Romania.
Getting started with PET
In 1993, Pfanner built Plant II, with filling lines for glass bottles and cartons, right next to the concentrate plant. One decade later, in 2003, the first PET line from Krones was delivered, rated at 15,000 1.5-litre bottles an hour, after Pfanner up to that time had been having smaller quantities filled in PET by a contract-bottler. “We only went into the PET market when the first UltraClean lines managing without preservatives were available on the market. You see, Pfanner and preservatives, that’s a contradiction in terms”, explains Günter Feusthuber, who together with the managing partner Hermann Pfanner is responsible for engineering and production at all the firm’s plants.
Traditionally, consumers know that Pfanner products come in one-litre and two-litre beverage cartons. For quite a long time, the gable-top carton had been something like a hallmark for Pfanner’s portfolio. But that changed step by step after the UltraClean PET bottling line from Krones had been installed in 2003.
In 2007, Pfanner expanded the line to include a Sleevematic labeller with Shrinkmat, after the marketing people had revamped the bottle’s shape and changed over from wrap-around labels to sleeves. This proved to be yet another boost to demand. “Today, we’re using 95 per cent sleeves because that dress option is simply incomparable”, explains Günter Feusthuber. This is best exemplified by the new tea-based drinks under the “Sun of Mexico” label, dressed in full-body sleeves featuring a truly sensational design but also the normal ice-tea, green-tea and fruit-juice-based beverages in 1.5-litre and 0.5-litre PET bottles with half-sleeves extending from the bottle neck to under the recessed grip in the bottle’s middle. “The market image of a special-shaped bottle with a recessed grip dressed in a sleeve is quite different to that of the same bottle with a wrap-around label”, is Günter Feusthuber’s firm conviction. “What’s more, the sleeve – as a barrier – offers a certain degree of product protection.”
Second PET line: wet aseptics
Demand for PET continued to grow, so that Pfanner in 2011 installed yet another Krones bottling line, rated at 13,500 1.5-litre containers an hour, at its Enns plant, this time a PET-Asept L, a wet-aseptic line with peracetic acid as the sterilisation medium for the containers. This monobloc is suitable for filling still, low-acid beverages with a guaranteed germ reduction by log 5. On this line, Pfanner now fills all its still fruit-juice-based beverages in 1.5-litre PET bottles.
Third stage: aseptics with preform decontamination
And in 2013/2014, then, Pfanner boldly ventured where it had never gone before: by decontaminating not the blow-moulded containers but the preforms and this – a first for the sector – in connection with a new filling valve that can also handle carbonated beverages. For this purpose, Pfanner replaced the existing rinser-filler monobloc and the Contiform blow-moulder (linked up by means of air conveyors) dating from 2003 by a Contiform Bloc with Contipure.
The likewise new preform infeed is now located directly at the Contiform Bloc, which comprises a heater module, the Contipure preform-decontamination unit (using H2O2), a conventional Contiform S8 blow-moulder module, an isolator with base cooling, an aseptic Volumetic filler with capper, and a height-adjustable discharge conveyor to match different container sizes. This technology enables high-acid beverages (with pH-values smaller than 4.5) like ice teas, juices and squashes, but also carbonated spritzer drinks to be filled aseptically with a decontamination rate larger than log 4.
In the Contipure process, both the outside and the inside of the hot preforms are simultaneously sterilised with gaseous hydrogen peroxide: an H2O2-air mixture is injected into the preforms from above through a central manifold, while the preforms are located in a space with an H2O2 atmosphere, which makes sure their outside is also decontaminated. As the preforms are treated downstream of the oven, the risk of re-contamination is reduced.
New filling valve for still and carbonated beverages
As part of the modification job, Krones not only installed a new Checkmat at the height-adjustable discharge conveyor, which inspects the bottles for correct fill level and the presence of caps, and features a filling-valve/capping-element assignment function, but also adapted the conveyors already installed. The line uses the existing Sleevematic with Shrinkmat for dressing the bottles, or alternatively a Contiroll.
The salient new feature in this system is the combination of Contipure preform decontamination and the use of a new filling valve, able to handle both still and carbonated beverages, which possesses a base that can be magnetically extended and retracted as needed: when carbonated products are being filled, this base is extended and pressed against the bottle’s neck finish. With still beverages, by contrast, it is retracted, thus keeping the valve at a distance from the bottle and ensuring full-jet filling for the still products. “There used to be a general consensus that aseptics were only suitable for still beverages. An aseptic line filling both still and carbonated products was regarded as problematic. The Contipure system has in my view meanwhile changed things here”, explains Günter Feusthuber.
“The Contipure’s big advantage is that it’s the preform that is sterilised, which means the bottle shape isn’t important any longer. This also means that it’s not necessary to validate every new bottle shape. The system is resource-economical, because no liquid chemicals are used, so that no sterile water is required for spraying the bottles, with concomitantly reduced amounts of wastewater. What’s more, less time is needed for make-ready at bottle change-overs than with wet aseptics, thanks to neck-handling throughout and the lowerable discharge conveyor. Since both cleaning and sterilisation times are significantly shorter, the Contipure’s overall equipment effectiveness is correspondingly higher. And last but not least, the Contipure system has a smaller footprint: “We’re talking about nine times nine metres here, while the figure for a wet-aseptics system (including all peripherals) would be around 14 times 18 metres”, says Günter Feusthuber, comparing the two systems.
“As far as the continuous running time is concerned, the two lines score more or less the same: both the PET-Asept L and the Contipure line can be run without any interruptions for 120 hours. In my view, the wet-aseptic system retains its justification for still products, despite the additional outlay involved, because it offers a higher degree of safety, particularly for more sensitive, low-acid products, with a germ reduction of log 5. But I see the Contipure system as the more future-compatible option both for still and carbonated products. In our case, the Contipure is absolutely sufficient for 90 per cent of all articles we’re filling, and it’s more affordable and resource-economical into the bargain. According to the VDMA (Verband Deutscher Maschinen- and Anlagenbau; German Engineering Federation), log 4 is the target to be achieved in aseptics, and we’ve even exceeded this figure with our preform decontamination. The Contipure can also replace any dry-aseptics system without any problem.” In early 2014, the Contiform Bloc with the Contipure preform-decontamination unit was installed and commissioned within a mere four weeks after dismantling and removal of the previous UltraClean system.
“The PET segment is nibbling away at soft-packed products’ market share.”
For the time being, Pfanner fills more than half of its production output in soft packages. About a quarter goes into cans, but this type of container is predominantly contract-filled. Around a fifth of sales leave the plants in PET bottles, while glass containers account for only about four to five per cent of the total. “PET is increasingly driving soft packages off the market, even though on the fruit-juice market, in particular, the soft package definitely has its legitimate place”, comments Günter Feusthuber. “But the PET segment is nibbling away at soft-packed products’ market share.” In his eyes, there will probably be no end to further design enhancements in the field of aseptics. “We could well imagine a faster change-over from the 28-millimetre to the 38-millimetre neck finish in the future, for example. But as things stand now, the Contipure constitutes a very sophisticated state of the art for filling still and carbonated beverages, one that’s highly future-compatible into the bargain.”
Hermann Pfanner, who as the owner family’s representative is responsible for production, quality and strategic focus, regards further development towards preform sterilisation, in particular, as the right approach. “We took a long, hard look at the system, we know Krones’ fillers, we trusted this solution right from the very beginning. This system has been tailored to our specific needs, because it renders our production operation highly flexible, both in terms of different bottles and disparate products – still, naturally cloudy, carbonated. We believe this system gives us optimum results.”
Hermann Pfanner sees an unequivocal trend towards “maximally natural, aseptic filling”, not least for ice tea, the segment in which the Austrian family firm is so successful. “Over the years ahead, we will no doubt be tackling the PET issue at the other facilities as well. We shall be needing lines with smaller outputs in the range of 10,000 to 12,000 bottles an hour for still and carbonated products, so as to maximise our flexibility. This kind of filling system with Contipure, which has given us very positive results in our first step, is predestined for this purpose.”
