Krones and Innocent build carbon neutral plant

The British beverage company Inoccent, famous for producing juices and smoothies, decided to build its first bottling plant of its own.
Krones won the order for four complete lines for PET packaging, with aseptic block and all corresponding IT technology.
The new plant, which will be sustainable and erected as a Greenfield project in the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, has the mission of being fully carbon neutral.
"We are committed to reducing water consumption to a minimum, as we want to treat it and reuse it as much as possible," explains Sam Woollett, innocent's Engineering and Facilities officer.
Each of the four identical PET lines will have the capacity to fill up to 32,000 bottles per hour. The new plant will be tasked with filling about 400 million bottles of drinks a year.
Among the machines supplied by Krones, the Contipure AseptBloc DA, which includes a modern Contiform 3 Pro blower and a Modulfill Asept aseptic filler, includes a modern Contiform 3 Pro blower and modulfill Asept aseptic filler.
For the Contipure D preform sterilization module, Innocent opted for a particularly sustainable version. This ensures a reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) thanks to lower consumption of hydrogen peroxide, steam and energy, as well as shorter preparation times.
All bottles after full will be equipped with a tamper-proof seal and – depending on the shape – with an enveloping or pressure-sensitive label. In addition, the Topmodul modular labeler will be synchronized in block directly with the Variopac Pro FS packer.
All production processes will receive scanning technologies from Syskron, a krones group company. Syskron, for example, has developed a MES concept for Innocent that, through appropriate interfaces, also integrates the ERP system, process control and warehouse management systems into the new plant.
This concept includes several sitepilot it family brand solutions and, not least, the Planning production planning system, the Line Management ordering and administration system, and Line Diagnostics for production data acquisition and analysis.
From the Share2Act service category, Innocent will use Connect in the future: this allows all information, such as shift times, to be made available to all employees in digital format.
Andy Joynson, Innocent's Chief Operating Officer, explained that the goal of the partnership with Krones is to "build Earth's favorite beverage company with its healthy products." Its location in the port of Rotterdam is not accidental. "We will minimize the distance between where the fruits arrive from abroad and the production facility. This allows us to reduce the company's CO2 footprint by about 10%.
We are very happy to be able to bottle our healthy beverages in our own factory, but even more pleased to ensure that the production operation and plant buildings are in line with our sustainability standards," says Andy Joynson.