At this year’s drinktec, the world’s biggest sectoral meet-up for the beverage and liquid food industries, Krones will, as in all the previous years, be showcasing its corporate capabilities in Hall B6. The principal focus this time is on innovations primarily designed to improve line performance still further, to ensure even higher individualisation and flexibility, and to impart additional sustainability to the production operation. Digitalisation plays a key role in this context, and constitutes a unifying theme for the entire Krones stand. Because marrying iron and steel to clouds and data makes for an even closer intermeshing of all processes along the entire value added chain – and will in the end significantly upgrade performance levels in the production environment as well.
High-speed filling lines
When it comes to filling beverages and liquid foods, the speed of the filling process plays a crucial role. For this reason, Krones is continuing to prioritise high speeds for its lines. At the drinktec 2017, a high-speed line for filling bottles with beer will accordingly be on show, with a rating unequalled at present by any rival on the market.
Individuality and flexibility
Consumers’ desire for individualisation is still rising inexorably, and Krones has precisely the right solutions for this. As exemplified by a pilot line comprising a combination of filler, direct printing machine and intelligent conveyors, Krones shows that even small batch sizes can be efficiently produced while nonetheless retaining maximised flexibility. This means that in future products can be filled on a just-in-time basis, and the containers individually dressed using a direct printing process – without order-picking and without warehousing.
Energy savings
Krones is also vigorously driving forward the issue of eco-efficiency – and the vision of an energy-autonomous, sustainable production operation is already taking tangible shape in the “Brewery of the Future”. In this research project, a brewery is being developed step by step that can manage without fossil fuels entirely, and instead obtains its energy exclusively from recovering recyclables.
Block technology
In addition, the demand for space-saving layouts is steadily increasing, which is why Krones is driving forward the block concept for complete lines, and thus continually expanding its product range. A wide and varied spectrum of blocked combinations will be on show at the fair. What they all have in common is this: they are compact, and correspondingly space-saving, cost-efficient and flexible
