Show with the flow

The Drinktec show organiser rightly emphasises the increasing international flavour of the event. This year’s 1,500-plus exhibitors are wending their way to Munich from no fewer than 70 countries, 10 more than in 2005. The organiser claims 2009 will set a new record of 55 per cent non-German exhibitors.

Despite the constraints of tighter marketing budgets, the event demonstrates a sustained ability to attract first-time exhibitors. And it still boasts an unchallenged reach from upstream processing, through filling and packing, even as far as end-of-life recycling.

Materials

The show’s breadth also spans all pack material types. Manufacturer O-I (Hall A1, stand 302) claims that customers are responding to glass in a new way, and is emphasising the aesthetic and branding effects that can be achieved. This focus on design feeds through into the stand itself, which is the creation of Italian maestro Francesco Lucchese.

Examples of innovative design in glass include the bottles for Suze and Font d’Or. Vichy Catalan Group has opted for a translucent ultramarine bottle for its premium Font d’Or Maximum water. According to O-I, the challenge is ensuring that this type of bespoke design is repeatable on an industrial scale.

Pernod Group’s Suze brand now uses an amber bottle that incorporates the ‘trademark’ paper ‘tie’ label in the glass embossing. This has the added benefit of avoiding the large number of rejects from misaligned labels, says O-I.

Flying the flag for plastics, Artenius PET Packaging Europe (Hall B3, stand 208) will be showcasing innovation in sectors as diverse as juice, milk and wine. This includes multilayer and monolayer containers and preforms for aseptic cold filling, with or without an oxygen barrier. For milk and other sensitive beverages, Artenius has its Xamos monolayer technology incorporating a high performance oxygen scavenger.

There is increasing interest in PET for wine, with Artenius manufacturing bottles for this sector in the UK, and potentially in Germany, too.

Also shown will be the company’s recently introduced panel-less heatset bottle for hotfill applications. The structure is flexible, says Artenius, and allows for the use of paper labels.

When it comes to plastics closures, Bericap (Hall B3, stand 502) will be focusing on weight savings, new options for aseptic lines, sports caps and oxygen scavenging systems.

Lightweight closures now include extensions to its SuperShorty range. These span variants for the beer market and carbonated soft drinks (CSDs), and have been added to by the lower-weight SuperShorty CSD Eco, an alternative for still drinks and a version for 35mm necks.

For still water, Bericap has its HexaLite closure range, complete with tamper-evident band. Options are available for lightweighted 26mm and 30mm neck finishes.

Sports closures include a ‘next generation’ push-pull mechanism, suitable for both wet and dry aseptic decontamination, and Thumb’Up, with its emphasis on one-handed opening, child safety concerns and wet aseptic decontamination.

Meanwhile, the potential of bag-inbox should not be underestimated. DS Smith Group company Rapak (Hall A2, stand 318) will be showing that, beyond its markets in sectors such as wine, the format offers solutions in areas from water and juice to beer.

For the water market, the availability of bag capacities from 0.75 to 1,400 litres is complemented by Rapak’s Aqueduct alternative to those water coolers that utilise plastics containers.

Similarly, for beer, the company now has an alternative to the traditional keg. After brewing, CO₂ is removed from the beer. It is later dispensed from the bag-in-box via a specially developed Carbonator Box.

For juice, says Rapak, the shelflife benefits after opening are especially noticeable.

Plastics colourant and additive supplier ColorMatrix (Hall B3, stand 345) will be launching two new products. Its Amosorb SolO2 high-performance PET barrier technology is aimed particularly at oxygen-sensitive beers, wines and juices. Lactra is a light-blocking agent suitable for dairy products.

In addition, the company will demonstrate its dosing technology and the web-based DosiXpress colourmatching system.

SolO2 joins other oxygen scavengers in the Amosorb range, but this time is effective in blocking oxygen ingress, or carbon dioxide egress, for significantly longer (up to four months in the case of oxygen).

Lactra is an opaque white light barrier available in liquid form, compatible with monolayer and multilayer PET.

The swing stopper is commonly associated with the glass bottle, but French closure manufacturer Edard (Hall A4, stand 113) aims to demonstrate that it can be equally at home on plastics. This traditional style of stopper sits around the neck of a PET bottle, which can be supplied either as a preform or blown container, in 50 cl and litre sizes.

Wet glue labelling is still of prime importance to the bottling industry, and Henkel (Hall A3, stand 123) will be showing how its adhesive product portfolio has expanded since the acquisition of National Starch’s business in this area. Henkel’s brands now include the latest-generation Euromelt adhesives, based on high-performance polymers and designed to provide efficient labellingof PET bottles. This type of hotmelt product was previously only applied to cartons and folding boxes, says Henkel.

As well as adhesives, the company supplies delivery systems, including four versions of its Central Adhesive Supply System (from manual to fully-automated).

Equipment

Italian company Procomac has been producing equipment since 1979, and is now part of the German GEA Group (Hall A4, stand 314), which will spotlight a range of process equipment.

GEA Procomac will focus on its aseptic filling lines, including a fifthgeneration Unibloc Spin carousel with wet peracetic acid sterilisation. Also on show will be a carousel using vapourised hydrogen peroxide sterilisation. For cap sterilisation, Procomac will demonstrate its new Sterilbeam unit, which uses energy-based technology rather than chemicals to achieve its effect.

Last year, the company won an order for its sixth cold aseptic PET line at Nestlé USA.

For the end-of-line, GEA Procomac Packaging will be showing its layerpreparation system for palletising, suitable for medium to high-speed production.

Krones (Hall B6, stand 100) is giving less away about the equipment it is dusting off for the Drinktec stand. But it says it will be placing the emphasis on reduced operating costs, space saving, increased line efficiencies, greater machine flexibility, turnkey installations and project management.

The company says it will feature highperformance systems for both wet and dry ends, intelligent IT systems, an ability to customise material flow and an overall focus on sustainability. As Krones points out, consumers are increasingly basing their food and drink brand choices on sustainability criteria, and equipment suppliers can contribute to an overall positive message.

For downstream collation packing, Italian manufacturer Ocme (Hall B5, stand 602) will be directing visitors towards its latest-generation Vega shrinkwrap line. This features low heat consumption and more efficient motors, ease of access and maintenance, and fully automatic size change. Pack options span unsupported film, and film with pad or tray.

Ocme has a long-established track record in supplying palletisers and robot palletisers, depalletisers, wraparound multipackers and laser-guided vehicles. More recently, it has produced its own fillers for liquids and viscous products.

French company Claranor (Hall A4, stand 113) is opening up a new area of technology with its pulsed light decontamination equipment. This can be used as an alternative to gamma irradiation and chemical sterilisation.

To date, the technology has been applied to closures and moulded pots for dairy products. More recently, it has been used for preform decontamination. It has also been used for the cold pasteurisation of sugar syrups. Claranor claims that its systems pay for themselves in less than 12 months.

German component manufacturer Badger Meter Europa (Hall A4, stand 145) will be putting its different metering technologies through their paces. These include Magnetoflow inductive flow meters, used where conventional flow meters are unsuitable, for instance, where the liquid is viscous or contains particles. This makes it especially useful for liquid foods such as yogurts, puddings or pastes.

Other options shown by the company will include oscillating piston meters, also suitable for filling viscous products.

Finally, no product life cycle in today’s drinks industry can ignore the role of recycling. Austrian equipment supplier Starlinger (Hall B3, stand 417) will be guiding visitors through its reprocessing systems, which include two main steps. The first of these is the recoSTAR PET continuous extrusion process. The second is the semi-continuous solid-stating process, which increases intrinsic viscosity (IV) and brings the recyclate up to food-contact grade.

Recent successes for Starlinger have included an order from France Plastique Recyclage for a recycling line and two solid-stating reactors with an annual output of 15,000 tonnes. These are for a new plant in Limay, and follow a similar installation last year in La-Neuve-Lyre. The Austrian company cites the strong decontamination performance of its equipment as a key criterion in its French customer’s choice.