PETpla.net Insider 12 / 2020

BOTTLING / FILLING PETplanet Insider Vol. 21 No. 12/20 www.petpla.net 30 Proactively approaching new ideas Multi-talented The town of Bissingen in Germany’s Northern Swabia region is surrounded by gently rolling hills and small tracts of woodland. The roads that lead to it pass through villages and by small farms. Livestock farming is particularly typical for the region – the source of Gropper’s raw milk. In Bissin- gen, raw milk is processed into a wide range of dairy prod- ucts that are then stocked in the refrigerator cases of super- markets across Europe. Last year, Gropper celebrated its 90 th anniversary. The company has grown considerably since its found- ing: the erstwhile cheese maker is now a mid-sized enterprise producing private-label dairy products, not-from- concentrate (NFC) juices, smoothies, and bottled water for customers across Europe. Gropper now pro- cesses around 350 million litres of milk a year. Despite these enormous quantities, regionalism still plays an important role, as Berthold Burgmeier, Head of Engineering, explains: “We source our milk from around 870 farmers within a 70 km radius of the dairy. The only exception is organic milk, which we also source from the foothills of the Alps since there are not enough organic dairy farms in our region to meet our needs.” Originally an all-dairy opera- tion, Gropper now also produces juice, smoothies, and bottled water. The company’s spirit of innovation is strong: “When it comes to prod- uct development, we are more like a brand manufacturer than a private- label supplier,” says Karl Klein, Managing Director Production and Technology at Gropper. “We don’t wait for our customers to come to us. We approach them proactively with new ideas.” As a result, Gropper has been successfully making organic products for supermarket chains since 2006. That same year, the company surprised its customers by suggesting they bring smoothies to the German market – long before many of the major brands. In 2009, Gropper began producing NFC juices in PET con- tainers for grocery discounters. “Our latest coup is our own organic mineral water brand, Rieser Urwasser. It has given our dairy a foot in the door to one of Germany’s biggest grocery dis- counters,” Klein says with an unmis- takable touch of pride. Clear expectations Krones became familiar with Grop- per’s untiring pursuit of innovation and willingness to take risks back in 2004, when the dairy decided to move into PET packaging. “PET containers make the product visible,” explains Karl Klein. “Bottles made of PET plastic are also very lightweight, fully resealable, and hygienically perfect.” The company had very specific ideas about how its first PET line should be equipped. They wanted to use a two-colour filler with dry-aseptic tech- nology. “It’s the standard in the dairy industry. All of our cup fillers work on that principle. So it was clear that our PET containers and caps would also have to be sanitised in this way,” says Karl Klein. Since Krones didn’t have that type of filler in its portfolio at the time, the Neutraubling-based company deliv- ered just a Contiform stretch blow- moulder and a two-colour sleeve labeller that was designed especially for Gropper. The Krones’ filling tech- nology experts had taken the custom- er’s idea as inspiration and developed a four-colour filler that uses gaseous hydrogen peroxide to sterilise the containers and caps. And their efforts paid off. In 2005, when Gropper was considering its next investment in a PET line, the company chose this newly developed filler from Krones. “It was still just a prototype – so of course, there were some ups and downs,” recalls Burgmeier. “When we were looking to add yet another line in 2012, we weighed very carefully whether we should go with Krones again. In the end, though, we realised that Krones had continually improved its dry-aseptic process in the mean- time – and so we did. Right now, nobody else on the market can build a dry-aseptic PET line at the same level of quality and reliability.” Championing dry aseptics Today, PET containers account for about 40 per cent of Gropper’s total production volume. The success of PET packaging is also reflected in the dairy’s capital expenditure. In 2015, the company decided to significantly increase its capacity for producing in PET containers and launched a wave of investment. That same year, Grop- per opened a second plant in Stock- ach, near Lake Constance, which was The stretch blow-moulder and filler are installed as separate units. An AirCo air conveyor transfers the moulded PET containers along the 60m (nearly 200- foot) stretch between the two areas. On the PET-Asept D, the filler and capper are housed within a cleanroom.