Innovation HotFill+: Efficient, Sustainable, and Successful
Pioneer performance by Pepsi and KHS for hot filling of thin-walled PET bottles
Rajendra Gursahaney, Senior Director of Engineering at the Pepsi Beverages Company, reaches a positive conclusion on the HotFill+ project Within the beverage industry, the development of the HotFill+ system is nothing less than a minor revolution, allowing companies who hot fill sensitive products in PET bottles to now use PET bottles without vacuum compensation panels. The acclaimed father of the HotFill+ process is Rajendra Gursahaney, Senior Director of Engineering at the Pepsi Beverages Company, who sparked off the evolution of HotFill+. The trigger behind it all was that a brand of Lipton Tea without any preservatives was to be introduced to the Russian market. Gursahaney shied away from the high cost of an aseptic filling line, however, and instead opted for hot filling – under the condition that he could somehow avoid using PET bottles with vacuum compensation panels that made the bottles heavier and thus more costly. His idea was to dose freshly filled, classic PET bottles with nitrogen to compensate for any shrinking of the PET bottles after hot filling, thus making vacuum compensation panels superfluous. After six months of trials at the KHS Corpoplast laboratory, the desired results were achieved which have since proved themselves in practice. Gursahaney now looks back on two years of experience with the HotFill+ process and is extremely satisfied. On the KHS line in Yekaterinburg, which operates on HotFill+ technology, each year 2.5 million dollars in costs for PET bottles are saved. The reason for this is that the weight of a 1.5-liter PET bottle has been reduced from 63 to 48 grams using the new setup. At the same time, the environment is benefiting from a lower consumption of materials and energy. In addition, the labeling area for the classic hot filling PET bottle can be used for marketing purposes more efficiently since absence of a vacuum panel allows better label application. According to Gursahaney, one of the decisive factors behind the success of the HotFill+ system was the successful collaboration with KHS during the project phase. He sums up. "KHS is now profiting from the great commitment that was invested in this project. For the industry knows that in HotFill+ KHS has proved something of a pioneer – and this of course helps to boost your image no end." Pepsi decided not to patent the HotFill+ process just for themselves but to share the benefits of this technology with others. "By making a procedure that uses considerably less PET and thus less energy readily available," says Gursahaney, "we would like to do something positive for the environment and for our planet."
