OAO “Kingiseppsky Molochny Kombinat, located in Kingisepp,
approximately one hundred kilometres west of Saints Petersburg has chosen GEA
Group Technology for its innovative process, filling and packaging line for
milk and dairy products in PET bottles.
Saint Petersburg region offers high quality milk and that is why KMK has
decided to exploit it using a sleeve full label and realizing a new, fresh and
attractive product. The PET bottle makes a difference for KMK products as most
of other products available on the market are filled in carton packages.
The range of products consists of ESL (Extended Shelf Life) milk
with different fat content (0,5% 2,5% and 3,5%),
Kefir (fermented sour milk) in two versions (3,2% and 0,5% fat
content) and fruit-flavoured drinkable yogurt. A
multifunctional syrup room has been designed to allow future introduction of
other dairy products on the market.
From a technical point of view the
product preparation area features for the first time in the Russian territory
an innovative solution composed of bactofugue and
microfiltration, which leads to an high quality product, with
14 days shelf life without the need of a very aggressive
treatment. Many different technologies of GEA Group operate in the
process area: Separator, bactofugue, microfiltration system (Gea Liquid
Processing Scandinavia AS), homogenizer (GEA Niro Soavi), milk and cream
pasteurizer (Gea Process Engineering).
The multi-product preparation room complies with high level quality
standards and warrants high operations reliability. The filling line can
produce 12.000 bph on two bottle sizes: 0,5 lt and 1,0 lt. The integrated
system of blower/filler/capper “Synchro” consists of a
volumetric electronic filler with magnetic flow meters. This
filler is 3A certified for dairy products. The filling machine
design is very simple and features permanently installed dummy bottles,
complete with automatic insertion/removal mechanism on each filling valve; the
C.I.P (cleaning in place) is performed in closed-loop and at high flow rate;
the filler sterilization uses overheated water; when in standby position the
dummy bottles are kept closed, for improved machine hygiene.
The filler is
complete with top covering hood and equipped with pre-filter upstream the
blower and absolute filter downstream the blower.
The anthropomorphic
palletizer produced by GEA Procomac Packaging handles different pack sizes and
is directly connected to the refrigerating cell where finished pallets are
stocked.
GEA Procomac has acted as main contractor for the project and Mr Igor
Lavrenov, plant manager, underlines that extended shelf life products of KMK
permit the empowering of their sales on the Russian market. «We are now
establishing contacts with many supermarkets and our products are present in
all St Petersburg region and twice per month are distributed to Moscow too». By
integrating product preparation, filling and packaging GEA Group has thus
supplied a complete, innovative and multifunctional line for dairy products
introducing a new PET bottle on the Russian market.