PETpla.net Insider 12 / 2018

BOTTLING / FILLING PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 12/18 www.petpla.net 24 Versatile beverage factory From hand bottling to 76 million fills In mid-2017, Healthy Water’s new production facility started operation. Krones was responsible for large portions of the plant engineering involved, supplied new lines, and inte- grated new machines into existing ones. The production under licence of fruit drinks from the Austrian Rauch is not the least of the developments that constitutes a guarantor of Healthy Water’s future-viability. The small hamlet of Nabeghlavi in the west-Georgian region of Guria has no village centre you could recognise as such. The few houses and farm- steads are scattered over the hills, the village sign is the only indicator denoting that a settlement is actu- ally located here. A wild stream has cut a small valley into the landscape, a valley so narrow that the architect who planned the new building for Healthy Water’s beverage factory had to opt for a multi-storey design. The kit is installed on two floors so as to utilise the entire height of the building, with the ground floor accommodat- ing the warehouse, and the first floor the filling lines and utilities. The office buildings each comprise four storeys, with the building complex rounded off by a section featuring 14 guest rooms, both for visitors and the company’s own staff. The company’s history started back in the early 1990s, when a Swiss businessman privately invested 40,000US$. In 1997, together with two Georgian families he had befriended, he was able to purchase the Nabeghlavi mineral water spring and plant, unused at that time. 200 million fills planned by 2023 In 1997, the Swiss-Georgian group of investors revived the bottling opera- tions, this time under the name of JSC Healthy Water. In its first year, the firm filled 600 bottles by hand. But after that, things really took off. A mere three short years later, production output had risen to one million fills. In 2003, the first Krones line was installed, for glass bottles. Two years later, sales had already reached 15 million fills. The market share of Healthy Water in Georgia soared, from its former 6% to over 50%, with the Nabeghlavi brand evolving into the market leader. In the following years, the com- pany also channelled some capital into other sectors, but the Healthy Water mineral water operation remained the holding’s keystone. After consolidating its domestic sales, from 2010 the mineral water division’s export grew strongly, and currently supplies 28 different countries. The logistical conditions might seem at first unhelpful, because the plant is located right in the very heart of nature, in the foothills of the Cauca- sian mountains, yet is only an hour’s drive away from the port of Poti on the Black Sea. In terms of process technology, Krones planned and installed a complete syrup kitchen. Irina Gaprindashvili, Head of Operations, with Plant Manager Vakhtang Megrelishvili