PETpla.net Insider 07 / 2017

BOTTLING / FILLING PET planet Insider Vol. 18 No. 07/17 www.petpla.net 31 Tour Sponsors: New soft drinks with German technology for Cambodia by Kay Barton Khmer Beverages Co., Ltd., Phnom Penh, Cambodia, April 3, 2017 We met: Mr Pov “Peter” Leang, President Khmer Beverages Mr Otdom Chhor, Training Supervisor Khmer Beverages Mr Sylyvann Borei, Corporate Communications Manager, Chip Mong Group Ltd. The Khmer Brewery in Phnom Penh, part of the Chip Mong Group, was just about to start its new soft drinks production when we met President Peter Leang for the interview. The family-led group was founded in 1982 and is active in Cam- bodia in various branches of industry. In addition to selling and producing international consumer goods in the field of drinks and food, it also trades in concrete, steel and ceram- ics as well as making cement for various fields of activity. Within just a few years, there has been huge investment in the highly- modern brewery and its “Cambodia Beer” is a familiar name in various countries. After previously filling beer into glass bottles, cans and kegs, they are now starting for the first time to fill various soft drinks into PET. The Khmer Brewery is the youngest member of the Chip Mong Group port- folio. After initially importing beer for the local market in 2005, in 2009 the company signed a contract with brew- ery equipment manufacturers Ziemann and filling specialists KHS for the first turnkey solution for its own beer pro- duction. The investment of US $60m into the project was to change the local market considerably from that moment. “We basically had no idea about pro- duction and filling and started from nowhere. But we saw clear opportuni- ties in the Cambodian market so we simply took a chance”, explains Peter Leang in the brewery showroom. The first beer ran off the newly-installed equipment on November 1, 2011. In phase 1, Khmer Brewery started with 600,000hl and expanded just a year later into phase 2 - with capacity dou- bled. The end of 2013 saw phase 3, with yet another increase in capacity and further expansion into the produc- tion of soft drinks. At this point, the company decided on a Krones line for PET filling in this branch of the busi- ness and finally changed its name to Khmer Beverages. To date, the company has invested a total of US $220m and further expan- sions are planned. The current capac- ity for beer lies at 5 million hl, with current utilisation of 50%, almost exclu- sively for the home market, with less than one percent for export. In the soft drinks field, they started with 3 million hl capacity.The clean water supplied by the Phnom Penh Water Supply Author- ity used in production is a mix from var- ious sources and is treated in different ways, depending on the drink for which it is used. Industrial water is cleansed in the in-house water treatment plant. During a tour of the brewery with the Training Supervisor, Mr Otdom Chhor, we came across quite a few Pentair Filtration and EUWA water treatment machines. Europe is everywhere. Apropos of Europe: a new canned stout beer called “Barrley Black” has just this March found its way into the portfolio. It also became clear during our tour that great store is set by open communication and closeness to cli- ents. So a large part of the (new) pro- duction hall is laid out for the public to walk around and is there to guarantee visitors gain striking impressions in all areas. “Under our “Cambodia” brand, we shall in the future be filling water into PET. Our planned CSD brand will be called “Ize” and will be available in four to five flavours”. In the cans field, there will also be various juices and energy drinks without carbonisa- tion. When it comes to the flavours, Khmer Beverages relies, inter alia, on sources such as Döhler and Wild. The packaging test runs were in the final phase at the time of our meeting and we got to see the first in-house manufactured PET bottles. The same preform CSD necks will be used for water and CSDs. The mate- rial comes from Indorama Thailand and is further processed on a Husky HyPET 300 HPP5. Here, there is a Husky 96 cavity tool for bottle sizes of 350ml and a 72 cavity tool for 500ml Peter Leang discusses the company’s strategy.