Sidel aseptic line helped Nongfu to launch ready to drink products

Sidel recently engineered and installed a complete aseptic packaging line, integrating the Versatile Aseptic Combi Predis at China’s Nongfu Spring. The line helped the leading Chinese beverage player launch a breakthrough in the domestic market: sparkling Ready-to-Drink (RTD) products, aseptically bottled in PET.

Founded in 1996 in Hangzhou, Nongfu Spring is one of the key players in the soft drinks market in China, maintaining leadership in the packaged water market over the past eight years. The company bottles provide high-quality natural drinking water and vegetable and fruit juices, functional beverages, teas, and other high-quality soft drinks, including plant protein yogurt, premium water for elderly people, and vitamin water. Its strong focus on innovation and premium brand positioning contribution to the steady customer base increase, even within beverage categories.

The leading Chinese player was already familiar with aseptic bottle decontamination technology in a standalone configuration. And it also validated Sidel aseptic dry preform sterilization solution in the past few years. This efficiently supports Nongfu Spring in the expansion of its portfolio while ensuring reliability and product integrity. Furthermore, for further flexibility, the dry preform sterilization technology solves the challenges presented by different bottle shapes, as the sterilization takes place at the preform stage. 

Additionally, the Nongfu Spring decided to equip the Combi with Sidel’s patented active base mould system, the Base Over Stroke System ( BOSS), to differentiate some of its bottles and expand its marketing opportunities. The technology can be selected depending on the container’s shape. BOSS is a piston-activated system in the blowing phase that strokes the base, raising and lowering it during the bottle-forming process, independently from the opening and closing of the two half-shells of the mould.

The new aseptic complete PET line at Nongfu Spring’s plant in Xin’anjiang (Eastern China) runs at 36,000 bottles per hour (bph). Aside from the Versatile Aseptic Combi Predis, it was also equipped with Capdis, the dry cap sterilization technology from Sidel. 

The line also includes Tetra Pak Processing Systems technologies, an easy-to-handle Sidel RollQuattro roll-fed labeler – for wrap-around labels – and a Roll Adhesive labeler cooler with optimized water consumption. In addition, the end-of-line solution integrates a wrap-around case packer and the modular PalKombi palletizer for medium to high speeds. 

To quickly reach the committed line efficiency and maintain consistent volumes and quality of production, Sidel also ensured that two dedicated shifts of field engineers worked alongside Nongfu Spring’s personnel for 18 months. 

Due to this fruitful cooperation, Nongfu Spring quickly decided to turn to Sidel again and invest in two additional Versatile Aseptic Combi Predis, installed in the company’s factories in Hubei and Zhejiang, respectively. Both equipped with BOSS and running even faster at up to 49,500 bph, those pieces of equipment have already been fully validated. Last autumn, Nongfu Spring acquired another Versatile Aseptic Combi Predis Combi from Sidel with speeds up to 54,000 bph. 

The Covid-19 pandemic led to the country-wide lockdown on 25 March 2020. It will be two years tomorrow as I write this. What have we learned in this time? Maybe the meaning of resilience since small companies like us have had to rely on our resources and the forbearance of our employees as we have struggled to produce our trade platforms.

The print and packaging industries have been fortunate, although the commercial printing industry is still to recover. We have learned more about the digital transformation that affects commercial printing and packaging. Ultimately digital will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future.

Web analytics show that we now have readership in North America and Europe amongst the 90 countries where our five platforms reach. Our traffic which more than doubled in 2020, has at times gone up by another 50% in 2021. And advertising which had fallen to pieces in 2020 and 2021, has started its return since January 2022.

As the economy approaches real growth with unevenness and shortages a given, we are looking forward to the PrintPack India exhibition in Greater Noida. We are again appointed to produce the Show Daily on all five days of the show from 26 to 30 May 2022.

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