Switzerland and Rivella – these two belong together like the Alps and fresh mountain air. Generations of people hereabouts have grown up with the iconic fizzy drink that boasts an impressive brand awareness rating of 95 per cent. Mind you, the Rivella Group is not resting on its classic laurels but is purposefully continuing to develop new drinks like FocusWater, a light soft drink rich in vitamins, which captures the spirit of the times.
Nowadays, more and more consumers are paying particular attention to a balanced diet and therefore reaching for drinks containing no sugar or only minimal calories. “And that’s precisely the trend FocusWater is addressing,” says Dr. Martina Pfeiffer, Head of Supply Chain at the Rivella Group. Not only is the vitamin-rich water available in low-calorie and no-added-sugar variants, its fresh and light flavour also caters for the taste of an active, young target group. The main market for Rivella’s new brand, which has been sold since 2019, is Switzerland, with exports going to France and Luxembourg as well. And its success has proved the company right: Sales of FocusWater boast double-digit annual growth rates.
Aseptic, efficient, reliable: the new line for FocusWater
FocusWater had previously been filled on a 20-year-old line – field-proven, that’s true, but no longer up to date. “As the new brand kept on growing, it became clear that a more advanced, more efficient solution was needed,” to quote Martina Pfeiffer. The group opted for a line from Krones, featuring the new compact Contipure AseptBloc – a state-of-the-art set-up for the small output range. What’s special about it is that it combines container and cap sterilisation, stretch blow-moulding, filling and capping in a single aseptic, microbiologically safe and reliable process.
Collaboration with Krones has proved highly successful for Rivella. The group has had a Krones PET line with a stretch blow-moulder up and running since 2015. A clear plus is certainly that Krones runs its own branch in Switzerland, so the group’s reliable partner is always close at hand. This was a crucial point for Rivella, as Martina Pfeiffer points out: “It gives us security.” That is because a local presence means fast service support and thus even more reliability in everyday production.
Maximum reliability on a minimised footprint
In addition to dependability and close-at-hand service support, there was yet another thing that mattered for the Rivella Group: a solution that was perfectly tailored to the limited space available in the production hall. It was imperative that the new line not only boast high performance but also be compactly dimensioned into the bargain. And that is precisely where the Contipure AseptBloc unleashes its strengths since it has a surprisingly small footprint. A smaller filler and optimised machine design save valuable space, without compromising on performance. Its nominal output of 14,000 containers per hour is a bit lower than that of the old line, but its efficiency more than makes up for that.
Compared to the old line, consumption of both water and chemicals has been reduced, which not only boosts sustainability but also cuts operating costs. And yet another smart move: The new line was erected in a mirror-image configuration to the existing aseptic line. That means that the filler and packer of each line are located directly opposite to each other, enabling the operators to efficiently control both lines. What’s more, the process logistics are the same, so that there are hardly any new routines the operators must learn, thus rendering the change to the new technology a whole lot easier.
