PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2011

BOTTLING / FILLING 40 PET planet insider Vol. 12 No. 09/11 www.petpla.net Mineralquellen Bad Liebenwerda, Germany, invests in a KHS packing system* How “dreams” come true *Based on an article by Jörg Hoffmann, KHS With consumers demanding an ever wider range of prod- ucts but with storage space at a premium, the retail market currently finds itself in a rather tricky situation. Faced with this dilemma, retailers think hard about which new prod- ucts they should add to their purchase lists. But Horst Kuhl, managing director of the mineral water bottling plant of Bad Liebenwerda, believes that in a situation like this it is up to brand suppliers – like Bad Liebenwerda – to respond. This is why his company has invested in an automated packing and palletising line by KHS. The mineral water company Bad Liebenwerda traditionally fills high quality mineral waters. The high qual- ity of the water has been confirmed by several very different institutions. The company was one of the first in Germany to start producing apple spritzers. Since then the company has introduced a range of spritzers: blackcurrant, cherry, light apple, and light pear. Spritzers are currently in the lead in the soft drinks segment with four million bpa, ahead of clas- sic soda pop which accounts for 3.5 million bottles filled. Launched at the start of 2010 in three flavours, peach mented. The premise of this idea is that ‘countryside quality’ is equally in demand in both town and country – and will be increasingly popular in the future. On this assumption the com- pany developed the Bad Liebenwerda ‘Landträume’ (=country dreams) prod- uct range. Since the beginning of April 2011 two low-calorie mineral water soft drinks have been sold under this brand name which, according to Bad Liebenwerda’s sales manager Ingo Hänßgen, contain local fruit and/or flower ingredients: Landträume apple, mallow, and hibiscus blossom and Landträume cherry, elderberry, and lime blossom. The main distribution area for these newly developed prod- ucts is the same as for all other Bad Liebenwerda products, that iswithin a 200-km or 125-mile radius of the com- pany’s site. In 1996 the company became Germany’s first mineral water plant to fill the 1.5l refillable PET bottles of the Genossenschaft Deutscher Brunnen (the Society of German Mineral Water and white tea, plum and green tea, and pomegranate and rooibos tea, the mixed tea Teeträume (tea dreams) brand is an interesting case. ‘First come, first served’ certainly seems to be true of this innovation. With 2.5 million bottles filled in 2010, sales of the Teeträume line nearly managed to draw level with those for Bad Lieben- werda soda pop in just a year. Ever faithful to the company philosophy of being happy to innovate and making a rapid response, the workforce in Bad Liebenwerda is naturally far from resting on its laurels. Only recently another very similar idea was imple- Mineralquellen Bad Liebenwerda, some 100 miles south of Berlin, enjoys an idyllic setting amid natural surroundings. The latest investment in KHS technology is a packing line for PET six-packs with an output of 18,000 PET bph.