IDM ¦ Packaging
The PET containers are dressed in a sleeve.
One of the world’s biggest dairy
cooperatives
40 · July/August 2022 ¦ international-dairy.com
a very good ramp-up phase,” explains quality assurance specialist
Lisa Moeyaert who is responsible for validating new installations.
“There were no microbiological problems, all products were sterile.
The blow-moulded containers’ quality has been very good –
material distribution in the stretch blow-moulding process is spoton.
That’s important for the ‘topload’, meaning the containers’
stability during transport, with six to seven layers stacked on a
pallet. Nor were there any complaints in regard to the quality of
the screw-caps and the way they were put on top of the bottles,”
is her verdict.
Each container format was first validated by FrieslandCampina
before it was released for production. Since May 2021, the process
is finished and all products and formats have been acceptance
tested. Various inspection and monitoring systems provide
production-concurrent quality checks and quality assurance: Three
Checkmat units automatically inspect the containers for correct fill
level and correct closure and label placement, and the Preform-
Check unit in the blow-moulder monitors preform quality. “The
most important thing for me with regard to validation was that the
Krones team was here on the spot, so we could perform the tests
together. That worked wonderfully,” admits Lisa Moeyaert. “I like
the way Krones people work, their very open, communicative and
invariably solution-driven mindset.”
FrieslandCampina is owned by around 17,000 dairy
farmers from the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany
organised in a cooperative. The dairy cooperative runs
facilities in 38 different countries and has a payroll
totalling about 24,000 people, which ranks it among the
world’s biggest dairy cooperatives. The four business lines
are subdivided as follows:
» Food and Beverage
» Specialised Nutrition
» Trading
» Ingredients
The facility in Aalter, located halfway between Bruges
and Ghent, is the biggest of FrieslandCampina’s three
production sites in Belgium. It is the European hub for
longlife milk and milk drinks in cardboard and PET for
brands like Campina, Joyvalle, Cécémel, Fristi and
Nutroma. In Aalter, a total of eleven cartoning lines are
running, three lines for white HDPE containers, three lines
for small 7.5-gram portion packs and now two aseptic PET
lines from Krones are all up and running. The production
location in Lummen is known for its cream specialities
under the Debic brand. The plant in Bornem specializes in
longlife dairy drinks.
/international-dairy.com
