Bottling lines for carbonated beverages are characterized by a high variability in terms of types of treated products, bottle sizes, filling methods and production requirements.
The best solution is to design a beverage filling machine with a bottling line that guarantees great operational flexibility: the latest innovations in the range of blowing as in the bottle blowing machine, monobloc filling and product preparation, point in this direction, in order to process different products in the same line, with very short format change times.
Great attention has been paid to the creation of a range of product preparation, to guarantee high quality standards of the finished product and a modular design of the lines that allows satisfying the most varied demands of secondary packaging.
Great effort is geared towards finding innovative solutions for all line applications, to meet the growing demand to reduce waste and product waste to a minimum, increasing the profitability of the installation. For example, the configuration XFILL (direct integration between the mixer "mixer" and filler that eliminates the need to have a central tank), which reduces the amount of product wasted, by the shift and during the change of flavor, optimizing consumption of CO.
The great variability of this sector also has to do with the changes of continuous and always faster trends, which derive from perceptions, expectations and consumption habits of the end user and, in some cases, variations in the type of regulations.
An example of this is the increase in the demand for healthier and more natural products, which has resulted in the reduction of the use of preservatives or the search for alternative sweeteners.
There has been innovations to allow for the filling of products with high foam formation and carbonated drinks without preservatives at temperatures up to 20 ° C.
Guarantee extreme operational flexibility, high productivity and low consumption, are key elements to meet the demands of a sector in constant change and subject to increasingly aggressive marketing policies.
The two main aspects of a carbonated beverage container are: to keep the CO2 content inside the product as long as possible and to resist the action of the expansion force caused by carbonation. Therefore, it is very important to optimize the production process of a gassed beverage container (design of the preform and tuning of the blowing process) in order to achieve the physical-mechanical characteristics required by the final product.
In summary, the fundamental requirements of a container for carbonated beverages are:
· Preserve as much as possible the level of carbon dioxide inside the container. This is particularly important in the case of small formats.
· Little expansion of the bottle due to internal pressure generated by carbon dioxide (good shape retention).
· Overcoming explosion tests and falling containers.
· Optimized design and manufacture of the bottom of the container to resist stress cracking.
· Weight reduction while ensuring excellent package stability.
The most relevant machines for this application include a wide range of solutions for the manufacture of preforms and packaging, filling, process and packaging machines, capable of satisfying all the needs of the market of carbonated drinks with respect to the formats of bottles, products and productivities.
