Sliced bread, barbeque sauces, drinks – the portfolio of the food and beverage producer Spitz in Upper Austria is diversified. Demand for energy drinks, juices and iced tea are particularly high, and was impacting the company’s only aseptic line, which at times was even running in four shifts. This drove Spitz to upgrade their filling capacities. With the performance of the existing wet-aseptic technology, Spitz opted once again for Krones – but this time for dry-aseptic featuring a Contipure AseptBloc DN.
The new line began operation in August last year, and is meanwhile running in three shifts. In each shift, one employee looks after the aseptic block, one supervises the labeller and the packer, and another is responsible for the palletising zone and supplying the line with new preforms.
Although Spitz has been a user of Krones’ aseptic technology, in terms of process technology, the new line differs from the existing wet-aseptic variant: the Contipure AseptBloc DN sterilises the preform’s surface in dry mode, using gaseous hydrogen peroxide.
Markus Kröpfel, technical director at Spitz, explained: “This enables us to do without a rinser, which means we’ve been able to significantly reduce our water consumption and also the amount of wastewater created in the production operation.”
Blow-moulder, filler and capper are in fully aseptic design, and directly block-synchronised with each other. This, according to Krones, ensures not only a compact layout but also a high level of microbiological process safety.
Currently, Spitz is mainly using this line to bottle different variants of iced tea at a rating of 24,000 containers per hour in up to six different bottle formats. But by investing in the new aseptic line, Spitz demonstrated receptiveness to entirely new product groupings. Because the Contipure AseptBloc DN will also be able to manage innovative beverage types from the low-acid category.
Walter Scherb jun, who heads Spitz in the third generation, elaborated: “We most definitely believe that the trend is towards naturalness: meaning no preservatives and as many natural ingredients as possible. There, aseptics are without a doubt the first choice, because that means we can bottle freshly brewed teas or still sports drinks, for example, to the very latest state of the art.
“At the same time, by investing in a new line we wanted to keep our options open for new product categories. Krones won us over with its Contipure AseptBloc. Now, we are in a position to not only bottle pH-neutral beverages, but also to dose coconut or aloe vera into them, for example. This combination of a block-synchronised dry-aseptic with an option for also handling fruit-chunk products is unique in Europe.”
