Aseptic Bottler Perfectionism

Traditionally, aseptically filled packaging can be stored, transported, and distributed at room temperature. There is no need to refrigerate the product and it saves costs, which often helps manufacturers to invest a great deal in the cost of sterile equipment.

But at Tropicana Europe's new plant in Zeebrugge, Belgium, they use a new Procomac device to aseptically fill 330ml and 250ml plastic bottles, but they are all refrigerated before they are sold. Why? The main reason is that the Tropicana Pepsi branch's pursuit of quality is almost crazy.

"Theoretically, aseptic filling and refrigerating is a good thing," admits Steve Andrews, Tropicana's European packaging manager. Like many single-bottle drinks that have a long shelf life and are sold in refrigerators, Tropicana can use as-clean, relatively simple, cost-saving ultra-clean technology. “But we promise to ensure that consumers get the best possible product,” Andrews said.
Says, "Using an aseptic filling system with refrigeration helps us do this. It brings the quality of the product to a completely different realm."

Although not technically necessary, the company decided to refrigerate containers to meet consumer expectations, and Andrews said: “Consumers expect to see juices stored in refrigerators that give people a fresh feeling.” Many of these bottled drinks are in Europe. Local supermarkets, convenience stores and gas stations retail in single bottles, and the shelf life for cold chain preservation is 62 days.

How much does it cost to stick to perfect quality? Calculating the cost of the aseptic sterilization program and the disinfection time, Andrews estimates that the ultra-clean method saves 30% of the cost compared to aseptic filling. Using ultra-cleanliness without having to use aseptic technology, he said: “We can provide products that completely satisfy consumers. But we still decided to adopt a more value-added process.”

Owens-Illinois supplies injection/stretch blow molded bottles and injection molded polypropylene caps. The 250ml plastic bottle has a single layer structure and weighs 21 grams. The 330 ml bottle weighs 23.6 grams and is blown from a three-layer co-injection preform. The middle layer can be a recycled material or a barrier material. Andrews said that all current 330ml bottles use PET and may include blocking and recycling components in the future.

Aseptic environment

After the bottles were removed from the Krones machine, they were sterilized, cleaned, filled and capped on Procomac's CC Unibloc 2 aseptic wire. About 400 bottles per minute, usually five days a week, 24 hours a day.

The Unibloc equipment is installed in a microbiological “isolation chamber” made of soft transparent polyvinyl chloride to form a channel that separates the internal and external environment. The internal environment is pressurized with sterile air purged with a 99.99% HEPA filter. Disinfection, cleaning, filling and capping equipment are all housed in this internal isolation chamber, in addition to transmission star gear, bottle feeder/capper and capper bottle output. The container and lid are spray-disinfected with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and osmotic acid oxonia, and foam spray oxonia is used to disinfect the machine.

In order not to destroy the sterile environment, equipment maintenance and production monitoring are performed. Microbiological isolation rooms are equipped with half-fitted sanitary clothing, gloves, disinfected transfer boxes and waste trap doors.

If a PET bottle or cap is damaged in a sterile "room," a skilled operator enters through a sterile air curtain (or box), wears half-fitted sanitary clothing and gloves, and then removes the waste into the waste bag or Trap door. If something is to be put into the machine, for example for repair purposes, the maintenance worker will again enter through the sterilizing air curtain, then spray the tool with oxonia disinfectant, and wait for the tools to be placed in the disinfection area for a while before entering the work again.

Into the bottle

The first step in the aseptic process is the transfer of the bottle to the gripper by the gas. The 38mm bottleneck is gripped and sent to the sterile equipment. The bottle enters the aseptic zone through a star wheel, and sterile positive air pressure in the sterile zone prevents entry of non-sterile air at the entrance. The bottles were sterilized by oxonia liquids both inside and outside when the bottles were passed through Procomac's 90-head rotary electronic sterilizer. An electronically controlled sensor monitors the spray of each of the 90 nozzles, and a sensor checks whether the nozzle has thoroughly cleaned the bottle.

After being spray-sterilized, the bottle that was gripped went through a transmission starwheel and entered a 90-rotation electronic spray device. Disinfected water was sent through multiple pipes and was blocked with vapor to prevent possible contamination by outside air infiltration.

After the bottle emerges from the cleaning device, the bottleneck is still gripped into the Fillstar FX filling machine, which has a total of 70 filling valves. Since the valve does not touch the bottle during filling, there is no risk of contamination. When filling orange juice, the juice is protected by overpressured nitrogen and air to avoid oxidation in the buffer tank of the filling machine. The buffer tank is equipped with a product stirrer.

"Each nozzle is equipped with a flowmeter to monitor the liquid volume," Andrews said. "The flowmeter can also control the flow rate to prevent certain products from foaming. We need to be able to speed up the filling at a certain rate, so that we can not cause too much More foam.” Andrews pointed out that juices with pulp do not change the aseptic process requirements, but affect the quality of filling.

Closure

The filled bottle is transferred to another conveyor star wheel which enters the Arol 20 capper capper. The independent pressurization module provides proper pressure to the cap feed hopper and capper conveyor belt. The cap is fed to the capper and then spin-pressed on the bottle. The inside and outside of the cap are also treated with oxonia solution and rinsed with disinfectant.

The bottle after filling and sealing passes through a transitional channel and is released from the sterile isolation chamber and is output to the outside area. The environment inside and outside the area is not in contact with each other. Once again, when the bottom of the bottle passes through the wall and then enters the bottle area, the testing station, the labeling machine, shrink or pallet packaging, palletizing and packing, the super air pressure in the sterile air will prevent the entry of non-sterile air. .

Downstream efficiency

From the aseptic filling line, the capped bottle is sent along the base. Just outside the sterile area, a domino jet printer prints the date of manufacture at the root of the bottle, and then the bottle enters a larger isolation chamber along the wall. A Heuft detector uses two cameras to detect the positive seal and fill level. The bottle then goes through the Hartness Dynac 400, which can hold any bottle for three minutes.

From the bottler, the bottle passes through an air knife system and air is blown onto the bottle to remove any residual moisture. Drying the bottle ensures the fastness of the label. After being labelled by the Krones Contiroll rotary labeler, the date is printed on the cap by the Domino coder and the label is checked again with the Heuft tester.

The bottles continue to travel downstream into the Krones TFS45 tray/seal/shrink wrapper and another T30 tray carrier. The TFS45 can package different numbers of bottles in one package. The film is first wrapped around the bottles, then thermoformed and shrunk into multi-packs for sale by retailers. The machine can also support cardboard around the multi-pack, and then sent to the next process tray packaging.

“Wrapping wraps of shrink wraps of different sizes opens up some sales opportunities for us. We can sell products to small residential stores that want to buy 8 bottles of packaging.” Andrews said: “That's a good thing, but we can't go downstream The original speed of the palletizer produced those packages, so we had to add another tray packaging machine. The two machines gave us a lot of flexibility, and sometimes we use two devices at the same time."

The entire packaging line at the Zeebrugge factory is so strongly dependent on Krones equipment that it is carefully arranged. Andrews has always regarded Krones as a favorite, he said: "Krones can solve any problems in our packaging process, in addition to services, they pay attention to our views, and usually will be targeted to meet."

After the Krones equipment goes offline, the trays or shrink-wrapped product packages are transported to another room for making and packaging. The packaged pallets are then stored in refrigerated warehouses and finally sent to distribution centers around the country by refrigerated trucks.

more opportunities

Andrews was asked about the machine’s return on investment and said: “Calculating the return is a bit too early, partly because we haven't achieved the efficiency of the scheduled machine yet, and we plan to do it in the future.” The place that really excited Andrews in the future is this Procomac package. The line provides the company with the opportunity to promote a variety of beverages using different bottle types and capacities. “The flexibility of Procomac equipment is enough to allow us to meet the marketing requirements of producing 1.5L and 200ml to 1L.” Filling more bottles will also help companies increase equipment efficiency. Andrews admits: "The current production line capacity is surplus, but in the future not only the production of two types of bottles, not just filled with orange juice, will produce other products and bottle types."