Egyptian-based milk and fruit juice maker Juhayna is filling beverages with fruit-juice in hot-filled PET containers on a substantial scale. The company is also using robotics for palletising fruit-juice cartons. And for both of these path-breaking projects, Juhayna called upon Krones.
Milk, yoghurt and fruit juice
Everyone of the about 80 million Egyptians drinks 22L of milk a year on average. And that means not just milk itself but also dairy products, like the ones Juhayna has been launching on the market since the late 1980s: the milk-based "Mix" drinks, the "Zabado" yoghurt drinks or the fermented, probiotic "Rayeb" milk drinks. "We're trying to increase our market share by a double-digit figure each year," said Safwan Thabet, Chairman and proprietor of Juhayna.
UHT milk in cartons accounts for over 95 per cent of packaged milk in Egypt, with fresh milk in HDPE bottles only coming to about 5 per cent. There is as yet no ESL milk available on the Egyptian market, nor any milk filled in glass or PET. The latter, however, would appear to be only a matter of time.
Capacities upsized
The original production capacity of 35 tonnes a day had grown to reach 600 tonnes a day at the turn of the millennium. In 2001, Juhayna doubled the output to 1,200 tonnes a day, while 2005 saw Juhayna buy the milk- and fruit-juice factory of Domty, a plant only a couple of minutes away from its own facility. It is here that, following a thorough revamp, milk mass production has now been concentrated.
“When we took over Domty, 700 staff there produced 100 tonnes a day. Today, the facility specialises in 1L full-fat-milk containers, and with 100 employees makes 600 tonnes of milk a day here, serving 60 per cent of the Egyptian and 40 per cent of the Libyan milk market," said Thabet.
Juhayna's original production plant, by contrast, fills relatively small batches of the various milk-based mixed drinks in 200ml cartons.
Juhayna opted for hot-filling at 84 degrees Celsius.
Juhayna operates six facilities, all of which are located in the same industrial estate. Each of these specialises in certain products and containers, enabling all of them to work at significantly higher levels of efficiency than was possible until 2005 with just one facility. The first concentrates on full-fat milk, the second on yoghurt products, the third on feta cheese, the fourth on milk-based mixed drinks, while another make fruit-juice concentrates, and one has been designed for fruit-juice production. In 2009, Juhayna was employing more than 3,000 people, 1,700 of them in its logistics company, newly founded in 2008, with 150 trucks and 22 distribution centres all over Egypt, right up to Aswan on the Upper Nile, 1,000km away.
Juhayna made 250,000 tonnes of products in 2009, including 190,000 tonnes of milk, dairy products and yoghurt and 60,000 tonnes of fruit juices and drinks with fruit-juice content.
This gives Juhayna a share of around 70 per cent in Egypt's milk market, where it's also competing with international companies and 25 per cent for juices.
Yellow Factory as a greenfield plant
The latest step was for Juhayna to relocate its fruit-juice production operation to a greenfield plant, which is only a few metres away from company headquarters.
This decentralised configuration of its production facilities serves to strictly separate products, microbiological hazard classes and different technologies, as well as to make optimum use of the space available.
This greenfield plant, called the Yellow Factory, is one out of three new buildings erected over the course of the past three years. The "Blue" one makes yoghurt, and the "Red" one makes fruit-juice concentrate.
For more than 20 years now, Juhayna had traditionally been filling fruit juices exclusively in beverage cartons. Not any more. Even though the Yellow Factory also accommodates five aseptic cartoning lines, it houses a PET line, as well. This is not only a first for Juhayna but also for the entire Egyptian fruit-juice and fruit-juice-drinks market, which had previously been divided into about 40 per cent cartons, 30 per cent glass and 30 per cent pouches (for drinks with a fruit-juice content).
"PET will also permit us to expand our exports," said Thabet. "The 38ml wide-neck PET bottles give consumers an entirely different drinking experience, and they weigh less and are safer to handle than glass."
The line has been designed to fill 250ml containers with initially five different flavours and, at a later juncture, 500ml containers.
Hot-filling: the tech of choice
Juhayna opted for hot-filling at 84 degrees Celsius. This technology is easier to master than aseptics, said Thabet.
"What's more, the walls of the hot-fill containers are somewhat thicker, making the bottles sturdier, which is an advantage given what is frequently rough handling in the market," said Thabet.
The 250ml bottle, developed by Krones' container design people, weighs 26g when empty.
Juhayna installed the Contiform H16 blow-moulder at ground-floor level. And as the converter supplying the preforms is only a few hundred metres away, the blow-moulder has been topographically and hygienically separated from the filling operation, which is located on the floor above it.
The empty containers are transported in AirCo conveyors to the rinser/filler Variojet/Volumetic, which are both in hygienic design, featuring a gable-type table top and topographically separated from the dry end.
New flavours
The hot-filled PET containers are inspected for correct fill level and then cooled down to ambient temperature in a cooler to avoid condensation. After all, the aim is to give them an attractive dress, dependably applied.
The company said it opted for wrap-around labelling in a Contiroll, not sleeve technology, because it wanted consumers to see the product in the bottle.
The two Variopac Pro non-returnables packers provide Juhayna with an option for either making 24 bottle shrink pads on both of them, thus reducing each machine's output, or in series-connected mode to first produce four- or six-packs and then shrink these onto 24 bottle pads, with a handle applied downstream. Juhayna uses a Modulpal robot for palletising.
On this line, Juhayna fills 100 per cent fruit juices, which can be made from concentrate or not, squashes with 35 to 50 per cent fruit content and drinks with a 10 per cent fruit-juice content of the Juhayna and Bekhero brands. The line has been designed to fill 250ml containers with initially five different flavours, and at a later juncture 500ml containers.
"Our in-house research department is developing further innovations. We've still got some flavours up our sleeves, with the line enabling us to produce all conceivable recipes," said Seif Eldim Thabet, Juhayna plant manager. Juhayna uses homogenisers throughout for fruit-juice production in the batch-mix system, "so as to achieve a uniform degree of consistency.”
The company opted for wrap-around labelling in a Contiroll, not sleeve technology because it wanted consumers to see the product in the bottle.
Strict separation
The factory follows the principle of strict separation of the various areas involved while providing stringent monitoring of all processes, of staff access authorisations to the individual segments and of compliance with hygiene-related criteria, said Niels Thomsen.
"In this factory, we check absolutely everything: the individual stages in the process just as thoroughly as the air and the floor," he continued. "It goes without saying that the cold chain is strictly complied with throughout the facility. We've provided absolute topographical separation between utilities and the production/filling operations."
He said the CIP system has been designed in two separate sections: for raw materials and for finished products.
"In the Yellow Factory, we're using state-of-the-art, crystal-sugar processing equipment, and also automated reception of frozen concentrate in barrels.”
Juhayna makes three quarters of the concentrate processed itself in two production facilities, including concentrates from mango, peach, apricot, strawberry, citrus fruits and the white guava, which is a fruit that is very popular in Egypt that contains 10 times more vitamin C than citrus fruit.
Concentrates made from fruits like apple, grapes and pineapple, on the other hand, are being imported.
“We have our own laboratory for checking the quality, the lab has been given certification to ISO and HACCP, and we will also be installing a small pilot system so as to be able to run trials on a smaller scale," said Anil Kaw, head of quality monitoring in the group.
Krones AG
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