KHS turnkey lines a major success factor
Crossroads Beverage Group, founded in 2011, invests in no fewer than three KHS turnkey lines
The Silver Springs Bottled Water Company in Florida is a fixed feature on the North American water market. Founded in 1991 by Karl and Margaret Richmond the company is now run by son Kane and is one of the biggest water suppliers to the retail trade, chiefly producing private labels for this channel of distribution. The Crossroads Beverage Group, opened in Pennsylvania in 2012, is based on the same business model and also belongs to the Richmond family. Crossroads' COO is Kirk Richmond, son of the founders of Silver Springs and Kane's brother. The family set up their new bottled water company because they realized that there was a big demand for bottled water in the northeast of the USA. Kirk Richmond tells us more. "We were getting more and more inquiries at Silver Springs from the northeast which was why we decided to take action in Pennsylvania and open a second water bottling plant." A site and buildings for the new company were found at the end of 2011 and on April 16, 2012, the company produced, filled and packaged its first PET bottle of water – on KHS machinery. Says Kirk Richmond, "We've had so much positive experience with KHS turnkey lines at Silver Springs that we wanted to benefit from this expertise right from the start of Crossroads. With one multifunctional KHS line outputting 36,000 PET bottles per hour and a second working at a rate of 72,000 0.5-liter bottles per hour we felt we were perfectly set up to best meet the requirements of retailers in this region." The demand for quality water from Crossroads was considerable from the very beginning – and much greater than the Richmonds could have possibly imagined. At the end of 2012 a third KHS turnkey line was thus ordered for Crossroads which is now already running at half of its full capacity. Like the other two lines the newest system consists of an InnoPET BloFill monoblock with an InnoPET Blomax Series IV stretch blow molder and Innofill NV filling system, an Innopack Kisters SP Advanced shrink packer and an Innopal PB1HS palletizer with an upstream, inline robot grouping. Kirk Richmond states, "We believe that one of the main reasons for our huge success is that we're strongly geared towards the customer, both at Silver Springs and at Crossroads. We don't just supply retailers with their own brands in standard PET bottles and shrink packs; we also give them plenty of advice which goes as far as providing them with a full design package for their bottles, labels and secondary packaging. We're already reckoning on selling 500 million bottles of water in 2013. In the medium to long term sales at Crossroads could even top those at Silver Springs." To this very day Kirk Richmond names KHS as one of the company's major success factors and is quite happy to pass on this advice. "I can only recommend that everybody goes for high-quality technical equipment right from the start of operations," he smiles, "for this always pays off in the end. To be more precise, to us KHS technology means product safety and reliability, delivering to deadlines and, as a result, a strong position on the market."
