Double the efficiency for Brazilian brewer

With a market share of around 12% and an annual output of around 16 million hectolitres, Grupo Petrópolis is Brazil’s second-largest brewing conglomerate. The company continues to expand, with two brand-new breweries constructed in mid-2013 and early 2014, each with two filling lines and a capacity of six million hectolitres.

These two breweries are identical in construction and were ordered in entirety from Krones AG. The company’s four other production facilities include a total of 11 filling machines from Krones. In the new facilities, a 62,000 bph (bottles per hour) and a 128,000 cph (cans per hour) canning line have been installed - the fastest owned by the company.

Following a construction line of approximately 12 months, the first brew was produced in late July 2013 from the Alagoinhas facility. The Itapissuma facility went online in 2014, with the first brew produced in April.

Krones supplied and installed every piece of equipment at these facilities, beginning with the brewhouse, continuing with the cellars and filtration kit, all the way through to the filling operation.

“In order to assure the quality level of our products, it’s vital for the Petrópolis Group firstly to downsize its energy consumption and secondly to keep the consumption of processing and operating materials at a low level,” said Grupo Petrópolis proprietor Walter Faria.

“We have the biggest filling lines in the world, and in this segment we always endeavour to incorporate the very latest innovations. We invariably opt for machinery and lines with leading-edge technology and strive to optimise the changeover times on our new lines. We operate with highly disparate types of container and pre-sort them upstream of the bottle washer, so as to reduce water consumption.”

The process sections of the two new facilities feature Krones’ latest solutions for beer production. Each of these brewing facilities has been dimensioned for a final capacity of six million hectolitres, which is achieved in each facility by two identical brewing lines arranged in parallel.

Each of these two brewing lines begins with a Variomill wet mill rated at 20 tons per hour. Pre-mashing is performed in a ShakesBeer wort copper, which reportedly improves taste stability. The Pegasus C lautering system filters the beer wort to a high standard of quality with a minimised content of solids. To dispose of the wet spent grains from the lauter tuns, two intermediate tanks are provided at each brewery, plus a 300 m³ silo. The brewhouse also features two first-wort tanks and two product tanks.

A plate heat exchanger rated at 3600 hL/h heats up the lautering wort. The wort copper is fitted with the Stromboli internal boiling system, which consumes up to 40% less energy. Each process section is supplemented by two hop-supply vessels per wort copper. A storage tank for high maltose enables approximately 10 tons of high maltose to be admixed to each brew. The facility is also set up for admixing rice and maize by means of a rice boiler. Furthermore, there is a shared whirlpool for removing the hot break and a wort cooler rated at 1500 hL/h, these two serving both of the brewing lines.

The two brewing lines operate with high gravity at 18.5° Plato and produce 16 brews a day, each comprising 1100 hL of cold wort. The brewhouse possesses its own CIP system with two caustic tanks, one acid tank and one water tank. Each of the lines is rounded off by tanks for hot and cold water.

In the cold section, the yeast system features a cylindro-conical yeast propagator, a plate heat exchanger for sterilising the wort, eight yeast storage tanks and a waste yeast tank. The diatomite candle filter installed, a Twin Flow System (TFS) rated at 640 hL/h, provides filtration with long cycles for beer stability. This diatomite filter system is supplemented by a beer cooler, a separator, a PVPP stabiliser and a trap filter, plus systems for carbonating and deaerating the product. Evoguard valve technology for hygienic process applications has been installed throughout the cold section. A CIP system with 11 different tanks assures automatic cleaning throughout.

Krones manufactured 18 cylindro-conical combined fermentation and storage tanks on-site, plus 12 bright-beer tanks.

Each of the breweries features a returnable glass designed to handle three formats at an agreed minimum efficiency of 90%. Highlights here include the latest-generation Lavatec bottle washer, with its low consumption of water and chemicals, plus two modularised labellers from the Solomodule range. There is a Checkmat FEM-G container inspector for each labeller. The line also features a Checkmat FM-G container inspector downstream of the filler, an empty-bottle inspector, plus a Checkmat crate inspector. Besides the Mecafill VKP-V filler and the Lavatec bottle washer, the wet end likewise includes a pack cleaning machine and a SHIELD tunnel pasteuriser. In the dry end, the line features a Modulpal Universal depalletiser. The crates of empties are then unpacked by a Smartpac.

One of the line’s most distinctive features is that the bottles are presorted by means of two Sekamat 704 D+L sorters, which are installed directly at the conveyor and identify the passing bottles in non-contact mode against their individually specific criteria, ensuring that all foreign bottles are rejected. A separate, smaller Smartpac packs foreign bottles in crates for resale. A second Smartpac packs the brewery’s own full bottles in returnable crates. A Variopac Pro has also been installed, which packs the non-returnable bottles and the premium-beer bottles in wraparound cartons. At the end of the line, two Modulpal palletisers are responsible for stacking the crates on pallets.

Each of the two breweries has been equipped with a canning line designed to handle four formats. The minimum efficiency agreed for the acceptance test was 92%. These are the fastest canning lines Krones has ever built, managing with just a single volumetric filler, a volumetric VOC, combined with a Ferrum seamer. As in all the other lines, the canning line also features a SHIELD tunnel pasteuriser for maximised levels of product quality combined with low water consumption. With the exception of the filler and the pasteuriser, all the other machines in the canning line are installed in pairs, to ensure an output of 128,000 cph. This relates to the empty-can inspectors and the Checkmat 731 FEM-G container inspectors. The hygiene seals for the pull-tabs are applied by no fewer than three Taxomatic labellers. For end-of-the-line packaging, two Variopac Pro FS film shrink-wrappers have been installed. In the packing zone, two Robobox layer preparation units for highly flexible, ultra-accurate layer pattern creation have been integrated and coupled with a Modulpal 2A palletiser.

The overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) tool provides a central report on what has caused malfunctions, with the requisite proportions of each machine involved in filler standstills. This applies both for the data automatically collected by the LDS and for the causes of standstills allocated in OEE computations. For unscheduled filler stops, certain people within the Petrópolis Group will be notified by email. If a shift in the OEE has not been acknowledged within 8 h after the end of that shift, a mail alert will be generated.

Key performance indicators for the month in question are displayed in the standard reports generated by the corresponding tool, together with any deviations and the actual value highlighted. The display shows key performance indicators for the individual machines, such as availability or the number of malfunctions. There are options for different time references, such as day, week, month or year.