PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2017

BOTTLING / FILLING PET planet Insider Vol. 18 No. 09/17 www.petpla.net 38 In Hungary, one of Europe’s fastest bottling lines for edible oil has recently gone into operation High-speed oil “The new line from Krones has enabled us to double our bottling capacities at a stroke – to what is now almost one million litres a day,” says Milan Kunciř, Managing Director of the Hungarian company NT GmbH, which produces sunflower oil for the international markets. The installation of this line, with a comparatively high rating for edible oil of 22,000 containers per hour, was the highlight so far of NT’s corporate thrust for expansion. Hungary is the world’s eighth- largest producer of sunflowers, and in terms of yield per hectare it even comes top. In European Union, Hungary has since 2016 ranked first, with a harvest of well above 1.8 million tons. So for the Agrofert Group, acquiring a stake in NT GmbH was a strategic decision: in 2014, it began to build a rapeseed edible oil refinery in Lovosice, the north of the Czech Republic next to existing rape seed crushing plant. Most of the oil produced there is used to make biodiesel, though part of it is also targeted to edible oil production. In order to establish a second source of revenue in this sector, Agrofert then decided in mid-2014 to take over the Hungarian sunflower oil producer. NT was then already supplying about 20% of the country’s edible oil market. Following the capacity expansion of the refinery, NT together with Agrofert was able to increase sales princi- pally through various sales channels. Currently the company is holding a market share above 50%. The parent company: Agrofert The Czech Agrofert Group was founded in 1993, back then with four staff members. Today, it consists of more than 250 firms, has a total workforce of around 34,000 people, and is thus the largest privately owned employer in the Czech Republic. There, and in Slovakia as well, Agrofert claims to be the most important conglomerate in the agricultural and food sectors. The company is also investing substan- tial sums in Slovakia, in Germany and Hungary. In 2014, it took over NT GmbH. The subsidiary: NT In the Hungarian city of Kiskunfélegyháza, in the particu- larly prosperous southeast of the country, NT GmbH is at home. The company buys sunflower seeds from around 1,000 farmers in the region - storage capacities for 120,000t are available for this pur- pose. Thus, the production site is in operation all year round, where NT processes the sunflower seeds to high-quality, refined sunflower oil. Its products …  “Kunsági Éden” is the premium sunflower oil of NT GmbH. It is bottled in a 1l PET container, with a striking closure in the Hungarian national colours, and sold through Hungary’s food and beverage retailers.  NT bottles its own secondary brands and merchandise in container sizes ranging from 0.9-10l. … and sales channels  Besides food and beverage retailers, the HoReCa market (hotels, restaurants, catering) is the second-most-important sales channel, followed by industrial customers like may- onnaise producers, who receive the sunflower oil in tanker trucks.  NT uses the by-products from vegetable oil processing to make animal feed, or utilises them to supply its own energy. Milan Kunciř, Managing Director of the Hungarian company NT GmbH During this period, the company also invested purposefully at its facility in the south-east of Hungary, in both oil mill and refining technologies. This has enabled its capacity to be upsized to 250,000t of sunflower seeds pro- cessed per annum.