PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2012

BOTTLE MAKING 26 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 10/12 www.petpla.net Dry aseptic PET line from Sidel at Refresco, France A French tea party A year after production start-up, the first results are in for Refresco France’s latest aseptic PET bottling line, installed at its Saint-Alban-les-Eaux plant, for tea-based drinks. The Refresco Group produces and bottles refreshing non-alcoholic beverages, such as sodas, fruit juices, flavoured water and mineral water. Equipped with eight aseptic lines in all, its three production sites - Délifruits, Nuits-Saint-Georges and Les Eaux-Minérales-de-Saint-Alban – are the showcase for this Euro- pean group’s core activity: aseptic PET bottling. The latest Sidel asep- tic line started in 2011 at its Saint- Alban plant. Refresco aims to serve major retailers and brands and offers sup- port to conceive new recipes and reliable and sustainable packages for sensitive products. An example is the launch of aseptic bottling for carbonated drinks in 2010. As Fré- déric Thoraval, Industrial Director at Refresco France, explains: “Our ambition is to promote and energise preservative-free carbonated drinks for retailers’ house brands and for the hard discount market.” Further- more, the logistics platform at its Saint-Alban site enables Refresco to store more than 50,000 pallets each year, whether they come from that production site or from one of the other plants, with a view to distribu- tion throughout France. The tech- nological choice in favour of aseptic bottling in PET started in the late 1990s, at a time when it was not yet fully mastered. “For an industrial company, PET makes sense only with aseptic bottling,” comments Frédéric Thoraval. “Hot filling doesn’t make sense from an energy or money standpoint, since it requires more PET material in the bottle. The develop- ment of aseptic technology, combined with the growth of PET and recycled PET – versus other materials such as glass and cartons – shows that there are great opportunities for future innovations in the field of sensitive products.” Already convinced by the ben- efits of aseptic bottling, Refresco has chosen Sidel’s Combi Predis/Capdis FMa. For a large company, this inte- grated blowing-filling-capping system, which requires no air conveying, provides “a distinct edge in terms of floor space used. Maintenance is also Refresco has opted for 100% dry aspetic bottling. The Refresco beverage production... includes all kind of non-alcoholic bever- ages...