Ian Atkinson, General Manager hosted the visit, as well as describing the cultural activities that are taking place on site Ian shared some of the sites objectives, attainments and current performance with our group. Ian described how their “Early Equipment Management Techniques” are being evolved and were yielding great benefits in operational achievements and improving operating efficiencies (approaching 90% reliability on pet lines). The plant at present produces around 40m case p.a., more recently there has been a capital investment of £6m to convert the small bottle line (line5) to Aseptic filling thus giving clean filling and a naturally clean product with no additives. The investment included new filler/sterilising unit provided by Procomac and a new modular labeller provided by Krones.

One of the purposes of the visit was to view this new equipment on line 5. The line has the capability to run from a 250ml bottle at 36,000 bottles per hour, 500ml bottle at 30,000 bottles per hour and a 1 litre bottle at 22,000 bottles per hour. Products filled on the line are Gatorade with a sports closure and Fruit shoot 100% which uses a flat closure, the line also offers opportunities for NPD.
Bottles are fed to filler via air conveyor which uses HEPA filtered air and they then feed into a bottle Steriliser which uses PAA (peracetic acid) at a set volume and temperature. This consists of 2 off 50 head units, and sterilises the internal and external surfaces and thread of the bottle. Bottles are then fed to the rinser that uses pasteurised water as final rinse and filling takes place on a 70 head volumetric filler with a 20 head capper which can apply flat or sports closures. Both types of closure are pre-sterilised using PAA.

All of the areas are enclosed and the system is under positive pressure, and these pressures are monitored to ensure that the system is under control. Air loaded with PAA is removed from the machine and feed to a scrubber to remove the PAA from the air before it leaves the controlled environment. From start up to the requirement for the next CIP / SIP the machine can run up to 96 hours and a subsequent full CIP / SIP will take 6 hours.

The Ancillary equipment that comes with the filler include a standalone CIP plant for cleaning the filler and a Unidox unit which is used to create the PAA at the correct temperature and strength for use in the SIP and the bottle Steriliser. The system also includes a Pasteuriser which has been designed to run at three different flow rates, to reduce the overall losses from the system, from the Pasteuriser the product feeds in to a sterile juice tank.

Our tour was conducted by members of the management team, Paul Catlin, Andy Smethurst and Richard Chinn, and we were given a detailed explanation of each production line and process. It was interesting to see how the site is developing the use of half pallets loaded with dollies for direct supplies to customers.
The production lines are fully automated, laid out in an efficient back-to-back format, making best use of space. With immediate empty can feed availability from the “hole in the wall” Ball Europe can manufacturing plant and also the automated despatch of full goods, the Factory operation looked extremely efficient. The automated loading of lorries by crane allows full pallets to be fed directly to the Britvic National Distribution Centre at Magna Park just a few miles north of Rugby.

We would like to thank Ian Atkinson and his Factory Team for a very informative and impressive visit, for their excellent hospitality, and, for giving B.B.I. members the opportunity to view a modern and continually improving soft drinks factory. Britvic are to be congratulated on this major investment to bring top of the range additive free product to the consumer.

Diagrammatic representation of the Procomac SafeAseptic system:

Visit Britvic website: ............ http://www.britvic.com
Visit Procomac website: ....... http://www.procomac.it

Report by Brian Gibbs BBI Visits Coordinator