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South American beverage multi Postobón installs three KHS lines at once
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Tuesday, 03 September, 2024, 15 : 00 PM [IST]
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Colombia
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Postobon installs three KHS lines at once. Newly formed teams quickly discover that there are plenty of synergies to be explored. This also holds true for the partnership between South American beverage multi Postobón and KHS – which in a very short time indeed has yielded not one but three filling lines featuring various block systems.
With over 50 million inhabitants Colombia is the second-largest state in South America after Brazil and one of the most substantial growth markets on the continent. The country is characterised by the mountain peaks of the Andes that reach heights of almost 6,000 meters above sea level and its around 3,000 kilometers of coastline more or less equally distributed between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
Colombia’s best-selling beverage producer is Postobón, a big player that exports its products to 27 different countries worldwide. Its vast and highly diverse portfolio not only includes water and soft drinks but primarily juice, teas, energy drinks, beer and coffee. In its role as contract filler the company also bottles Pepsi, Gatorade, Mountain Dew and Seven Up, for example, plus Lipton Tea and Heineken beers. Of its 71 facilities, 20 are production sites that accommodate more than 100 filling lines, 20 of which are used for PET bottles.
The company’s two largest complexes are located in the capital Bogotá, a metropolis of ten million, and in Malambo, a suburb of Barranquilla in the north of the country, where a greenfield project designed to house a total of eleven lines was begun in 2018.
Whereas in the past Postobón’s long-term relations with KHS focused on the supply of stretch blow moulders, in 2018 the Colombian bottler opted for its first block system from the Dortmund systems provider. The first procured line includes an InnoPET TriBlock for water in plastic containers that comprises a stretch blow moulder, labeller and filler. At a maximum capacity of 54,000 bottles per hour, the line is technically convincing with its consistent neck handling from the preform to the bottled product.
With the help of the experts from KHS’ Bottles & Shapes program, a 600-milliliter bottle was specifically developed for this application that saves on material and weighs no more than ten grams. One particularly remarkable attribute in the dry section of the line is the multifuel burner on the Innopack Kisters SP that enables the shrink tunnel to be flexibly heated by either natural or propane gas.
Postobón was so pleased with the quality and speed of the installation and the work performed by the team on site that it subsequently ordered not one but two more block systems within the space of just 18 months. The second KHS line went into operation in Bogotá in 2021. This is also a turnkey filling line where a BloFill duo block for the hot filling (HotFill+) of juice, tea and energy drinks with optional nitrogen dosing forms the heart of the line. Finally, the third KHS line was installed at the aforementioned site in 2023 – with a TriBlock for carbonated beverages such as Pepsi Cola.
César Bohórquez, who as national project manager for Postobón coordinates the implementation of all strategic growth projects, said, “We value KHS as one of the world’s most renowned manufacturers of plant engineering. We’re impressed by their pioneering technological standards for high-speed lines. We count on KHS with respect to the growth of our business as one of our key technology partners. They develop extensive and efficient systems for our processes that perfectly meet Postobón’s growth requirements.”
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