Climate-neutral juice factory
European manufacturer Innocent Drinks, which is 90% owned by Coca-Cola, has opened a new bottling plant that will be 100% electrically operated and totally carbon neutral. It is fitted out with four Krones PET bottling lines and corresponding IT infrastructure.
Drinks manufacturer Innocent Drinks’ new facility in the Port of Rotterdam, Netherlands, named “the blender”, is one of the world’s first carbon neutral factories. Krones has delivered and installed four specially-designed PET lines for it. Innocent, which is the European market leader for smoothies, has a healthy, sustainable and environmentally responsible image and aims to set an example in the food industry. Sam Woollett, Site Director of “the blender”, says that the business is aiming to be climate neutral by 2025 and the new plant will play a key role in reaching that target.”
Innocent Drinks has made minimising its carbon footprint a primary goal. Its efforts were recognised in 2018, when it was officially certified as a B Corp – a private certification of for-profit companies for their “social and environmental performance” – demonstrating that a successful business can also be responsible.
The company has used contract fillers for many years but decided to build its own filling plant in order to better manage the sustainability of its production. The blender, one of the first carbon neutral factories in the world, is equipped with a combination of technological innovations and clever designs, all in the interest of reducing emissions in every area of operations.
The plant was built from sustainable, locally sourced materials and incorporates heat recovery and solar panels, will have its own wind turbines from 2024 and will then operate as a carbon neutral facility. A fleet of newly designed electric trucks transport bulk orange juice from a nearby storage facility to the factory. The location in the Port of Rotterdam was chosen deliberately; it helps Innocent to reduce the total mileage in its value chain by 20 percent, which also helps to reduces its emissions, Sam Woollett explained.
As well as building an environmentally compatible facility, the company wanted to create a pleasant environment for the 200 employees on the site. The building has been designed to provide plenty of natural daylight, room to move around and space for working together, and a safe and inclusive company culture.
Adaptable, quick changeover PET lines
The four PET lines supplied by Krones are used primarily filling juices and smoothies. Innocent Drinks has left enough room in the plant to add a fifth line if needed. The main criteria for awarding the contracts for the greenfield project were: sustainability, including minimised consumption of operating supplies and water; safety and reliability of the equipment; and the quality of the product and its packaging.
Innocent sells a wide range of different drinks in different sized bottles, made to very different recipes, so the systems have to be flexible and capable of producing high output volumes per hour but they also have to be easy to change over to another product or size.
“Two to three different bottle formats and around ten different drinks are filled on each line,” says Sam Woollett. “That’s why we ultimately chose Krones. They offered the best solutions for our needs.”
Production began in July 2022, after the four PET lines were delivered, installed and tested in early 2021. Although the lines are identical, they are currently filling at different output rates. One is operating at 22,000 containers per hour, a second at 27,000 and the other two operate at 32,000 containers per hour.
The Contipure AseptBloc DA blow-moulder-filler block consists of a Contiform 3 Pro stretch blow moulder and a Modulfill Asept aseptic filler. The Contipure D preform sterilisation module features a sustainable design that uses very little hydrogen peroxide, steam and energy, and requires very short preparation times, thereby helping to ensure a low total cost of ownership (TCO). After filling, all containers are provided with a tamper-evident seal and – depending on the bottle – either a wrap-around or a pressure-sensitive label. Packing is handled by the Variopac Pro FS, just downstream of the Topmodul modular labeller.
Filling under aseptic conditions ensures a longer product shelf life and preserves the product’s flavour. The lines are cleaned every 72 hours or as needed between products. A complete CIP process takes around 90 minutes.
The Contipure AseptBloc DA at a glance:
- Suitable for up to 70,000 containers per hour;
- High acid products;
- Round and square PET containers;
- Standard and lightweight containers;
- Only one sterilising medium: gaseous hydrogen peroxide (H2O2).
Trust-based collaboration
Innocent Drinks especially appreciated the reliability and flexibility that the Krones team brought to the project.
“We’ve been very lucky with the Krones team on site. When they arrived, we were behind on the actual construction of the building. They were very flexible and supportive and helped move the project along,” says Sam Woollett, Site Director, Innocent Drinks.
“What I appreciate most about Krones is that they do what they say they’ll do. We’ve never had an incident throughout the whole project where they said they would do something and not delivered. All the lines went in on time, they started running on time and the performance tests all happened on time. Being able to actually just trust in Krones has made it so easy to work with them across this whole project.”
Digital technology
Krones is also helping the project go digital. Its digital technology experts developed for innocent a turnkey manufacturing execution system (MES) concept that integrates the new plant’s enterprise resource planning (ERP), process control, and warehouse management systems using the appropriate interfaces. Various IT solutions from Krones’ SitePilot portfolio, including the Planning production planning system, the Line Management order and material management system, and Line Diagnostics for data acquisition and analytics are included. Innocent Drinks will use Connect from Krones’ Share2Act Services, which means that all information, such as shift schedules, can be made available digitally to all employees.
