The Chinese Popular Republic is today one of the most dynamic world regions. In the last twenty-five years China is gradually becoming financially integrated with the rest of the world.
From 2003 foreign investments in China exceed foreign investments in the US: the interest of foreign venture capitalists has turned to China for its huge potential internal market and the appearance of a urban middle-class with a raising purchasing power.
However the Chinese Market is difficult to penetrate, especially for the high level of competitiveness: in fact, not only big corporations are present, but also local companies that are growing fast, following the economic growth of the country.

Beverage Industry in China
Beverage industry is a case to the point. If during the eighties the market was dominated by big corporations like Coca Cola and Pepsico, nowadays the beverage leading company is the industrial group Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co., Ltd., with a turnover in excess of 4.4 billion Yuan and more than 10,000 employees. Established in 1987 by Zong Quinghou in one of the most developed areas in western China, Wahaha focuses initially on baby food and ice cream production. In three years Wahaha grows at a fast pace, also because it turn its attention towards beverage. In 1994 Wahaha acquires three other beverage companies in the Fulin region and becomes China's biggest bottler. In the following years, twenty sister companies are established all over the Chinese territory. In 1996 Wahaha and Groupe Danone SA set up a joint venture to establish five more production companies. Today Wahaha headquarters in Hangzhou control 70 sister companies and more than 40 production facilities in China, with a total production capability of more than 2,5 million tons of bottled product. More than 30 different products are sold with Wahaha brand, including mineral water, carbonated soft drinks, iced tea, milk-based beverages.

A win strategy
The win strategy of Wahaha is putting the technological competence in the field of health care and pharmaceutical products to achieve a better competitiveness in the beverage sector, the core business of the company. That is why most of Wahaha's actual investments are geared towards technology, namely the acquisition of innovative systems to achieve a higher productivity.
Wahaha has always been very attentive to the quality of its suppliers: they must be able to supply quality products and have an internal quality policy certified according to ISO 9001 international quality standards. Moreover, Wahaha is very attentive to the sound financial position of its suppliers.
Procomac has been able to obtain Wahaha's trust in a number of different bottling projects since 1999, when the first filler sold to China was shipped. Procomac is one of Wahaha's main suppliers and Wahaha was one of the first companies to deploy Procomac's hot fill technology.

A new concept

Having started its activity in the ice cream business, Wahaha has always paid attention to milk-based products. The company is always testing new technologies to find a solution that could balance product quality and cost reduction. That is why Procomac has been chosen for a "cross-over" project that could enable Wahaha to upgrade the traditional Hot fill technology to obtain a higher product quality and a larger range of products including sensitive products. The project started in August 2006 with the first order for two Hot fill filling lines featuring peculiar upgrades.
Procomac has deployed its experience in the field of aseptic filling to design a system with a high level of hygiene and environment control. Firs of all a sterilizing and rinsing system for bottles and caps has been integrated in the system. The sterilizing /rinsing/filling/capping bloc is protected by a microbiological isolator with bottle entrance and exit system to keep the filling ambient under controlled conditions. Using Gripstar ACE HS 90 for container treatment and STERILCAP ESL for caps treatment a log reduction of 4 can be achieved.
The hot fill filler Procomac Fillstar HF PET 2 70 is in a special version with membrane valves to obtain a very effective CIP on the product path. It features an interception valve to control the amount of recirculated product to ensure its quality. AROL capper is in washable version.
A bottle neck handling system with gripping starwheels accounts for very short bottle format changeover times; it is also possible to perform a changeover to use containers with different neck diameters: in this case square 0.5 l. PET bottles with 28 mm. neck finish and round 0.5 l. PET bottles with 38 mm. neck finish are used on the line. In te grated process units are also in the scope of supply for this project: Unidox for sterilizing solution production, Uniflux Spin for utilities filtration and line C.I.P., Unitherm H for sterile water production. These units are pre-assembled at Procomac on self-supporting skids and share a common operating logic with the rest of the line to be able to manage automatically all line cycles.
The two lines have a production speed of 20,000 bottles/hour with 0.5 l. PET bottles. Thanks to the upgraded sterilizing and control systems the range of products that can be bottled is very wide, from juices and tea to milk-based products.
Procomac peculiar skill to examine peculiar customer requirements and translate them into new technology concepts was successful also in Wahaha case: after the start of commercial production on the first two lines Wahaha has experienced the advantages of this approach and has signed a new order with Procomac for 7 other lines of the same type. The new seven lines will be installed in different production facilities during 2007.

(05/18/2007)