Page 42 - Best of 2019 English

KHS technology for a cult brand
Orangina lemonade is a French institution. In La Courneuve near Paris, it Tis filled into cans using machines made by KHS in Dortmund
he lemonade in the bulbous bottle is and is managed by Carmen Germann, Director considered a French icon, if not a nation- Regional Center Southern Europe at KHS: “In al cultural asset. It is owned, however, by France we work with all the major corporations the Japanese beverage company Suntory, such as CCEP, Nestlé, Danone, Heineken and
which acquired the Orangina Schweppes Group Carlsberg, as well as wine customers and indepen-
for USD 3.3 billion in 2009.
The history of the brand began in 1935, when
Frenchman Léon Beton bought the formula and production rights from a Spanish pharmacist, filled the beverage into pear-shaped bottles
and called it Orangina. It is now sold in more than 60 countries and has been available in disposable PET bottles since 2018.
“Orangina Suntory France” now oper- ates four production facilities in France. The smallest with a workforce of 112 employees is located in La Courneuve, a town situated northeast of Paris with a population of 41,000. “Schweppes and other soft drinks are bottled here, too”, explains Alice Tourani, Manager Can Line in the production department.
Somebody else who is very famil-
iar with this filling line is Thierry Tanezie, Sales Manager at KHS France, which has 15 employees from Germany
dent bottlers.”
The filling system used by Suntory likewise
comes from KHS. As Thierry Tanezie explains: “It's a 75,000-cph canning line that was in-
stalled in 2018.” Delivery required 60 trucks to transport all the parts from the participat- ing KHS production sites in Dortmund, Bad Kreuznach, Worms, and Kleve to La Cour- neuve. “The installation took around eleven
weeks and was up and running without in- cident – which we’re very proud of,” recalls
Thierry Tanezie. People familiar with KHS will be aware that 75,000 is the number
of cans that this system is capable of filling per hour. When run on a 24-
hour basis and allowing for change- over times when the line is switched over to another beverage, it fills some 1.4 million cans per day. Orangina in
cans? That's right: the alternative to the bulbous bottle has been available since
Alice Tourani, Manager Can Line, checks the stock of empty cans in the warehouse. There are several million of them stacked on pallets here
42 FRANCE
Photos: Gunnar Garms, Orangina Suntory France