BrauBeviale 2023: Recycling, brewery and bioreactor tech innovations take center stage

08 Dec 2023 --- F&B machinery innovation was a leading trend at the BrauBeviale 2023 trade show in Nuremberg, Germany. At the event, which took place between November 28-30, companies showcased their latest filling, blow molding and processing machinery developments.

PET Technologies presented its APF-Max 2 blow molding machine. The Ukraine-based blow molding machines manufacturer produces automatic blow molding machines for PET bottles. The company also makes blow molds, together with design corrections for PET bottles for its equipment and other existing low molding machines.

PET Technologies has customers demanding 100% recycled PET bottles. “Actually, there are more and more customers on the market who intend to produce fully recycled PET bottles, and our machines are well designed for these kinds of preforms to produce good bottles,” Maxim Poliansky, the company’s CEO, tells Packaging Insights on the show floor.

PET Technologies’ APF-Max 2 blow molding machine.Poliansky says the latest supply the company made was to a customer in Hawaii. The customer’s name is Waiakea and it uses volcanic water for its beverage solutions.

“Waiakea uses only 100% PET bottle preforms, and these preforms respond to the collected ocean plastic waste the customer wants to work with. So we have a special machine design that can easily work with these recycled materials,” explains Poliansky.

PET Technologies is also trialing QR codes printed on PET bottles to bring all the production data and information that is usually on a label into QR codes. “This eliminates the need for actual labels and reduces packaging waste,” the PET Technologies’ CEO tells us.

Bottle and can filling innovation
At the show, Leibinger presented its combined can and bottle and can filling machine at the event. Matthias Knapp, the company’s chief operating officer, tells us that the machine can produce 3000–1300 cans per hour.

Knapp says the company sees stronger customer demand for cans than for bottles, “but as we are producing machines that can fill both containers — bottles and cans, including PET bottles — we can deliver various customer demands.”

Leibinger also showcased the market’s “smallest” can filler, which is able to produce 1200 cans per hour. “It is particularly suitable for brewery start-ups. We are working with several start-ups based in Germany, the US, Australia, Samoa and worldwide,” shares Knapp.Leibinger’s can and bottle filling machine.

Harnessing brewing tech for foods
Krone’s subdivision, Steinecker, presented the company’s first bioreactor for the alternative food processing industry.

Alexander Scheidel, the head of alternative food processing at Steineker, tells Packaging Insights that the company’s approach is to use a bioreactor “instead of an agitator for a circulation loop — what we know from the brewery industry — to circulate the nutrient solution and the cell suspension within this bioreactor.”

Scheidel explains that the circulation loop consists of several connection outlets or inlets that move at different heights and are connected to the suction and pressure side of the pump, ensuring that Steinecker can run the bioreactor in different flow directions.

Steinecker’s bioreactor for alternative food production.“The bioreactor can be used for the alternative food processing industry, so we call this novel food area ‘alternative food production.’ That means we can produce your biomass out of mycelium or fungus, we can produce from microalgae or yeast cells and use this bioreactor.”

“The exhibited machine is the first sold bioreactor and so we still have to validate which kind of product runs the best in the system. But we are convinced that due to the knowledge we are using from a brewery industry, we can adapt that also for the alternative food processing market,” says Scheidel.

Regarding the bioreactor’s economic, sustainability and transportation advantages, he says that when companies are working with an agitator, the agitator itself is very heavy and especially for big bioreactors, companies need a big motor load to run the agitator.

“So we just have a pump here installed in this system. That means the motor load of the pump is lower than when using an agitator and the cost of this circulation loop is less than with an agitator and transport will be easier as well.”

By Natalie Schwertheim

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