PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2019

Kane Richmond, CEO Silver Springs BOTTLING / FILLING PET planet Insider Vol. 20 No. 10/19 www.petpla.net 33 Two block systems for Silver Springs and RealPure Bottling Making every penny count Driven by the market’s demand for water as a beverage, Silver Springs Bottled Water Company has become Florida’s largest privately held bot- tled water company. The company attributes this success particularly to the equipment in which they have invested: pleased with their first KHS InnoPET TriBlock, they immediately purchased a second one for another plant. The Richmonds from Florida are real pioneers: when in 1991 Karl and his wife Margaret acquired the Silver Springs Bottled Water Company, founded six years previously in Ocala, Florida, bottled water in the United States was still a total niche market. The Richmonds firmly believed in the future potential of Nature’s very own thirst-quencher, however – at a time when the favoured refreshment of the regular consumer in the land of Pepsi and Coke was the sweetened soda pop. The couple’s boldness was rewarded: water may not have topped sugary soft drinks in popularity in the USA until 2016 yet in the many years en route to this success the Rich- monds have enjoyed growth rates of 20% and more. At the outset they managed to meet demand with just six employees, now several hundred people work for the company at its now four sites dotted along the east coast. The business keeps the whole family busy: father Karl turns up for work every day at the ripe old age of 85 and sons Kirk, Keith and Kane share the tasks of executive manage- ment and responsibility for the various production facilities. With grandsons Kiel and Mason, the third generation of the family has also long been bot- tling water, with them now running one of the biggest independent bottling operations in the United States. Technical foresight The Richmonds’ instinct for market opportunities isn’t the only factor which has paved the way for their suc- cess; they have also demonstrated plenty of technical foresight. Alcides Vieira, Vice President of Sales & Marketing KHS USA, has close ties to the Richmonds: “For as long as we’ve known each other, the Richmonds have always been among the very first to opt for our new technologies.” In 2008, for instance, they invested in KHS’ latest InnoPET BloFill stretch blow moulder/filler block. And in 2017 they were the first to commission the KHS InnoPET TriBlock with a label- ler integrated between the stretch blow moulder and filler. Besides a certain amount of the aforementioned pioneering spirit, this also requires a high degree of trust on the part of the customer – and a convincing perfor- mance by the line supplier. This is confirmed by Kane Rich- mond, CEO of Silver Springs. “We of course work in a people’s business where mutual trust and long-term relations play a central role. What we especially value in KHS above and beyond this, however, is their abso- The first of the two InnoPET TriBlocks with a stretch blow moulder, labelling module and filler is installed at the RealPure Bottling Company in Magee, Mississippi.