Five times AirbackPlus for Japanese Asahi Group
Providing the best product quality while acting sustainably is the motto of the Asahi Group from Japan – and one that is perfectly substantiated by KHS Corpoplast stretch blow molding equipment and the new AirbackPlus development. Tatsuya Inoue, Corporate officer and General Manager of the Technology department at Asahi Soft Drinks Co., Ltd., says, "We've been relying on KHS Corpoplast in our soft drinks segment since 2000 and have invested in twelve stretch blow molders to date. Ten of them are in operation and we only recently had five of these retrofitted with the newly developed AirbackPlus system. As predicted by KHS Corpoplast, through this investment we're profiting from savings in compressed air of up to 40%. This allows us to again be extremely sustainable and also greatly cuts our overheads." In Japan the Asahi Group currently holds a market share of approximately 40% for beer and around 15% for soft drinks. It is also active on a national and international scale in the food sector and various other areas of business, such as logistics and restaurant management. The group realizes an annual total turnover of 1.7 trillion yen (about €14 billion). With a share of approximately 55% of total sales alcoholic beverages are the group's mainstay, followed by soft drinks which account for just below 30%. The star alcoholic beverage products are beer brands Asahi Super Dry, Japan's market leader in the beer segment, and Clear Asahi. Wonda coffee, blended tea Juroku-cha, Mitsuya Cider, and Calpis are at the top of Asahi's soft drinks range. Alcoholic beverages primarily reach the consumer in the glass bottle and can, with the PET bottle the most popular container in the soft drinks segment at 60%. Says Inoue, "We need quality containers for our quality products and this is ensured by our use of KHS Corpoplast stretch blow molding technology. We also appreciate the fact that KHS Corpoplast permanently questions what it has already achieved and continuously strives to improve. AirbackPlus is a perfect current example of this." Even before the introduction of AirbackPlus KHS Corpoplast held an outstanding position regarding the consumption of compressed air in the stretch blow molding process. Compared to the previous generation the InnoPET Blomax Series IV has cut the amount of compressed air used by a targeted redesign of the valve block, among other factors. Depending on the bottle volume, up to 35% of compressed air is saved as opposed to Series III. AirbackPlus is always used in conjunction with the established Airback I process. With Airback I the exact quantity of compressed air required to pre-blow a bottle is extracted from a container just produced and fed into a buffer located at the center of the blowing wheel. From here it passes directly to the next preform. This method achieves compressed air savings of approximately 10%. The pre-blowing process is followed by the high pressure phase where the AirbackPlus process comes into play. Here, more compressed air which is still usable is collected from the freshly produced bottle and fed to the pre-blown container at increased pressure (intermediate pressure stage). This cuts the amount of compressed air used by a further 30%. Each of the ten new blow molders produces up to 60,000 PET bottles an hour. If Asahi retrofitted all these blow molders with this new development, and we reckon on a compressed air saving of up to 40%, this means Asahi uses around 600 cubic meters less of compressed air per machine and hour. Assuming that 0.2 kWh of energy are required for one cubic meter of air, 120 kWh can be saved per hour. And if we assume that Asahi has an average of 5,000 production hours per annum, the reduction per machine is about 600,000 kWh. That's 6,000,000 kWh for ten machines. At €0.10 per kilowatt hour that's an annual cost saving of €600,000. This is an excellent value which means that Asahi will have a return on investment in just less than 15 months. Inoue explains, "AirbackPlus is a new development which clearly shows how strongly geared KHS Corpoplast is towards its customers. This customer orientation is also reflected in its outstanding service. All told, the partnership we've enjoyed with KHS Corpoplast over the last 15 years is just as we wish it to be."About KHS KHS GmbH is one of the leading manufacturers of filling and packaging systems for the beverage, food and non-food industries. Headquartered in Dortmund, Germany, the company has an international production network with over 4,600 employees worldwide. In 2014 KHS was presented with the Innovation through Research seal. With this the Stifterverband, a nationwide German patron of education and science, honors companies' outstanding commitment to research and development and their particular responsibility to state and society. KHS GmbH is a wholly owned subsidiary of Salzgitter AG. With around 25,000 employees throughout the globe the German steel and technology group achieved a turnover of over €9 billion in the 2014 business year. Within the Salzgitter Group the KHS Group and two other special machine manufacturers make up the Technology Division and are part of the core business of the MDAX-listed corporation.
