World's Largest KHS Filler for Plastic Bottles Destined for Russia

The future task of the record-setting filling system is to bottle kwas, a Russian bread-based beverage produced by fermenting water, rye, and malt as the basic ingredients.

25/08/06 World's largest KHS filler for plastic bottles ever manufactured is destined for Russia. BSI (Breweries Supply International) with headquarters in St. Petersburg ordered this world-record holder for BSI's Deka brewery plant in Veliky Novgorod. 

The dimensions of this bottling giant are 8.4 meters long, 7.3 meters wide, and 3.6 meters high.  The filler weighs approximately 30 tons.  The filling system is blocked with a rinser and a capper.  The size of the entire block is 10 meters long, 12 meters wide, and 3.6 meters high and weighs a total of nearly 37 tons.

The future task of this record-setting filling system is to bottle kwas, a Russian bread-based beverage produced by fermenting water, rye, and malt as the basic ingredients.  Kwas, like vodka, is considered the national beverage of choice of the Russian people.  Unlike vodka, however, kwas has a very low alcohol content of maximum 1.5 percent and until just recently, it was brewed primarily at home in Russia.  Innovator BSI began to produce and bottle kwas about ten years ago at its Deka brewery when an investment was made in a KHS turnkey line designed for an output of 18,000 2-liter PET bottles/h.  In addition to the 2-liter PET bottle, the line is capable of processing 0.5-liter and 3-liter PET bottles.  Due to the phenomenal success of kwas, further investment in high-performance plant equipment became more than necessary. 

Deka bottles kwas with the world's biggest KHS filler for plastic bottles at an output of 36,000 2-liter bottles/h.  In order to ensure the maximum efficiency of the new KHS turnkey plant engineering, Deka plans to use its new investment in KHS equipment mainly to process the 2-liter size PET bottle, the most popular bottle style for kwas on the market.  

The new KHS filler, equipped with 180 filling stations, is bottling machine of the Innofill DRV (pressurized – computer-controlled – volumetric filling) product line that is unquestionably predestined for filling carbonated kwas.  The filling process in brief: Kwas flows into the bottle after pressurization.  The filling valve is closed electropneumatically when the prespecified fill volume is reached.  The bottle is then depressurized.  The Innofill DRV operates without filling tubes.  The product radiates to the inner walls of the bottle over an internal spreader.  Filling the PET bottles by means of electromagnetic inductive flowmetering ensures exact fill levels at all times.  Overfilling is not necessary; product loss is avoided.  If changeover to a new PET bottle size is planned, a press of a button is all that is required to make the necessary changes to the fill volume.  The Innofill DRV filling system thus provides high flexibility when bottling bottles of various sizes and shapes.  The general rule: maximum flexibility for all eventualities.