More than standard
Poland's most popular mineral water gains new labeler
Dortmund, May 17, 2016 - The task: to provide a multifunctional labeling machine which is easy to operate and meets the high quality requirements of Poland's biggest brand of mineral water. The answer: the Innoket Neo from the KHS Group. Not one but three machines in this new series are in service at Nałęczów in Poland. One of the main reasons for the bottler investing in this particular piece of equipment was its free-standing labeling station concept which gives the operator optimum access and the highest possible level of safety. Cisowianka is a natural mineral water which is filled directly at source not far from the Polish town of Nałęczów near Lublin. The region's extraordinary microclimate makes it a famous spa, its excellent air quality primarily valued by people with cardiovascular disorders who come here to take a cure. The filler of this special water, ZL Nałęczów Zdrój, runs one of the most technically modern mineral water bottling plants in Europe. Founded in 1979 in Drzewce very close to Nałęczów, it has been drawing its water from a source about 100 meters below the ground for over 35 years. The company is proud of its high standards of quality and safety; it does not change the natural features of its water in any way. Outside Poland premium brand Perlage is the best-known Nałęczów water, filled into dark-blue bottles and exported to restaurateurs in many countries in Europe, America and Asia. Specific system for particular demands When it came to packaging its natural commodity the company did not want to make do with the usual standards and began looking for a specific system. It soon found that the KHS Innoket Neo series best satisfied its top-class labeling requirements. Available in six different sizes, it caters for a number of different labeling processes and capacity ranges. In Nałęczów the customer opted for a combination of cold glue and self-adhesive labeling, with the basic dressing consisting of paper labels for the front and back of the PET bottles. On this count the Innoket Neo is convincing with its rotating glue pallets which, together with many other innovations, permit very long labeling station maintenance intervals of up to 20,000 hours. This is equivalent to three to four years in three-shift operation. One of the special features of the equipment is the application of a self-adhesive shoulder label to the bottles. Downtimes during reel changeovers or faults are also prevented by redundant labeling units, thus ensuring machine availability. For maximum bottle protection the machine does without the otherwise usual, abrupt bottle flowgate; instead, the bottle flow is very gently moved through a feed screw which is driven by servomotors. The customer uses the Innoket Neo to label Poland's leading Cisowianka mineral water brand in three varieties: still, medium and sparkling. On average 450,000 bottles are processed per day – which is well below the machine's maximum output, as Kamil Banaśkiewicz, technical project coordinator at ZL Nałęczów Zdrój, emphasizes: "We fill several hundred million bottles per year here at our plant, with our KHS labeler one of the most reliable machines in our production shop." The machine's use for these three concrete variants of mineral water is based on the specific requirements of the connected lines: the container material, the number of labels per bottle and the efficiency. The Innoket Neo series is of course also suitable for any other labeling task and filling line, so that the customer is currently talking about a further project. The variety of containers processed by the Polish bottler is infinitely larger; throughout its entire portfolio the sizes of container vary from 0.3 to 1.5 liters. There are all types of glass and PET container and can, from the classic PET bottle to the premium glass bottle. It is thus obvious why great attention is paid to flexibility with each new investment in plant engineering. Details convincing "For us, both the quality at KHS and the after-sales service were of equal importance," says Banaśkiewicz. The KHS Innoket Neo also had the client convinced with its various clever details. For format changeovers, for instance, the entire station can be extended by 40 cm on special runners. This provides access to areas which on standard machines are hidden inside the machine body behind other parts and only partially accessible. In addition, the entire label magazine is mounted on a swivel table, enabling the important magazine head to also be perfectly adjusted with its fixing clips. Another definitive factor in the success of the project was the cooperative partnership during the planning phase which continued on into the fast commissioning phase and beyond, explains Banaśkiewicz, with the systems supplier from Dortmund in Germany putting together the best complete package. About ZL Nałęczów Zdrój spółka z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością sp. K ZL Nałęczów Zdrój is one of the most modern plants in Europe and has all the very advanced and state-of-the-art technologies which enable closing the extracted water in bottles while maintaining its original purity and naturalness. All the employees of the company belong to the group of highly skilled specialists in the art of water bottling process. The research and development department is constantly working on new solutions and patents as well as on making those already present in the plant better and even more efficient. The plant is widely known in the country as well as in Europe for its natural mineral water products: Cisowianka, Cisowianka Perlage, export brand Perlage and Nałęczów Zdrój. It is located just above the rich water resources of Nałęczów district. The company is strongly bound to the region’s natural environment and aware of this great value. It applies many pro-ecological solutions. ZL Nałęczów Zdrój successfully combines innovation and advanced technique with the respect to the environment and appreciation of people who work in the plant. About the KHS Group The KHS Group is one of the leading manufacturers of filling and packaging systems for the beverage, food and non-food industries. The KHS Group includes the following companies, among others: KHS GmbH, KHS Corpoplast GmbH, KHS Plasmax GmbH and NMP Systems GmbH. KHS GmbH manufactures modern filling and packaging systems at its headquarters in Dortmund, Germany, and in Kleve, Bad Kreuznach and Worms. The KHS Group's PET expertise is pooled at KHS Corpoplast and KHS Plasmax in Hamburg, Germany, where light PET packaging and innovative coating systems are developed and produced. NMP Systems GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of KHS GmbH based in Düsseldorf in Germany, designs and markets new, resource-saving packaging systems for PET bottles. The group has an international production and service network with over 4,800 employees. In 2015 KHS was awarded the Top 100 seal of approval for exceptional innovative power and outstanding innovative success among German SMEs. In 2015 the group achieved a turnover of around €1.14 billion within the Salzgitter consolidation. The companies in the KHS Group are 100% subsidiaries of the MDAX-listed Salzgitter AG corporation.
