A strong contingent of BBI members were able to visit the InBev Brewery at Samlesbury, situated at the foot of the Pennine Hills in a glorious part of Northern England.

This “jumbo brewery” was originally built by Whitbread in 1972 on a green field site just outside Preston, and now covers 80 acres, and has a capability of producing over 4.5m hl of beer p.a. The site operates 24 hrs per day for 363 days per year and its principal role is to manage complexity on behalf of the InBevUK Supply Chain.

The visit was hosted by David Froggatt, Packaging Manager and David explained the site history and how ownership had moved from Whitbread Brewing Co. to InBev with Interbrew, Heineken and the Bass integration all being part of the changes which influenced ownership along the way. The BBI were also welcomed to the site by Mark Holmes the Plant Manager.

Samlesbury Brewery

InBev has four global brands, Stella Artois®, Beck’s®, Leffe® and Brahma®, and is a top-tier performer in the global brewing industry, with Stella Artois® being the UK's number one premium lager. Other brands include Castlemaine XXXX, Boddingtons, Murphy's, and Bass Ale. These products are produced at Samlesbury in bottles, cans and kegs, and pack sizes for cans and bottles vary between 4 and 24, thus with their range of SKU’s, the management of complexity is an important part of the Samlesbury operation.

The Global operation of InBev requires consistency (including factors such as taste, productivity, etc.) throughout the world and to achieve this state the Company has embarked on a project named “Voyager Plant Optimisation”. This project focuses on teamwork, communication and leadership, requires standardisation of all processes for InBevs’ 135 sites, and its achievements are audited by an internal team. As David stated this is companies’ road map of moving from “biggest to best”. Results from these audits define Samlesbury brewery to be in the top ten sites worldwide. Recent restructuring at the brewery has produced cost savings and the operation is run by multifunctional teams which are arranged to allow the volume profile to match seasonal peaks and troughs.

There are two bottling lines, one canning line and one keg line on site. The larger bottling line, Line3, was installed in 1998 as the fastest line in Northern Europe at a speed of 100,000 b.p.h., costing £12m, and as an InBev/Krones turnkey project. The line has a double-deck pasteuriser, with a holding capacity of 85,000 bottles and which we were able to see on our tour of the Brewery. The end of line packaging is provided by both Kister and Mead equipment for four bottle sizes namely 250ml, 284ml, 330ml and 355ml. The other bottling line, Line 4, was installed in 1992 and was upgraded to 46,000 b.p.h. in 1997. The line is able to fill 660ml as well as the bottle sizes on Line 3.
The Can line performs at a rate of 72,000 c.p.h and the Keg line has a capability of 800 k.p.h. via 14 lanes.

Krones Sensometic Filler

The complexity of the operation required the need to reduce line changeover times and the use of the basic principles of S.M.E.D. (Single Minute Exchange of Die) has given David and his team some excellent reductions in the amount of line downtime. For example the time required to change the bottle size on a filling machine has been reduced from 90 minutes to 99 seconds by designing and installing quick change components and we were shown a video demonstrating this changeover.

Among the recent successes at the brewery is the introduction of one of InBevs’ Premium Brands namely Brahma®. Samlesbury have been given the responsibility to produce this beer for the Western European Zone of their global business. This adds to other global activities such as the worldwide export of Bass Pale Ale.

The visit was well attended and gave a much appreciated opportunity for members of the BBI to view an impressive large scale operation that is expert in managing the complexity of different packaging configurations for International Brands in order to fulfil their customer requirements. The BBI would therefore like to express thanks to InBev for the visit and particularly David Froggatt for a first class presentation.

Visit Inbev website
http://www.inbev.com

Brian Gibbs