In Heineken’s Zoeterwoude brewery, the business trials a number of new products from brewing to packaging within its R&D plant. And recently, they invested a new canning facility where quality and consistency came before speed. 

Heineken has operations in more than 70 markets and in the last decade the business have significantly increased their exposure to emerging markets, which will be a catalyst for further growth. 

Supporting this activity is the R&D pilot plant at Zoeterwoude in The Netherlands. In this hall Heineken have a wide variety of plant and equipment that allows them to brew, test and package future beers in different formats.

Enterprise Tondelli have been working in the R&D pilot plant for a number of years now and have delivered several packaging projects ranging from bottle filling to tunnel pasteurisation. 

The latest project supplied by the business is a new canning facility rated at 1,500 cans per hour. Part of the challenge was to achieve a high quality result with such a low output that could then be scaled up for high speed production.

With the area already supporting a number of activities already, space was also quite challenging especially in terms of the height and footprint required.

However, working very closely together with Heineken personnel, Enterprise developed a plan that overcame the difficulties to make a user friendly and ergonomic line. 

Cans are delivered to the plant as full height empty can pallet stacks at 2.8 m high. Enterprise Tondelli supplied one of their high-level stainless steel can depalletisers that automatically remove interlayer boards and then sweeps the cans onto a high level conveyor.

There are several all stainless steel models available ranging from a simple unit rated at 1,500  cans per hour up to 17,000 cans per hour before entering the high speed range.

Mindful of their environmental footprint an ionised air can rinser was selected that obviously has no water consumption yet effectively cleans the cans with the ionised air causing any static held dust etc, to empty out.

A rotary can filler/seamer with double CO2 flushing before filling was used and achieves on average less than 50 ppb pick up.

An important feature of the can filler was the collection of all CO2 exhausts. A special system was designed and fitted so that all gases could be discharged safely rather than into the factory ambient.

A new drying tunnel was also fitted post pasteuriser from Enterprise Tondelli’s manufacturing partner Eurosistemi who supply many types of driers along with complete conveying solutions. The dryer with integral fan in sound deadening enclosure ensures that no water is left in the punt or on the sides of the cans before packing off.

Jan Pieter van Kempen, manager of the R&D facility said: “We knew that it would be difficult to find a can filler/seamer of this small size that met our stringent performance criteria.

“That’s why we approached Enterprise Tondelli for this. We are very happy with the result and the low DO achieved.”

Garry Wilson, senior project manager for Enterprise Tondelli added: “As on previous projects it was a pleasure working with the Heineken team on this demanding project. I appreciate the professional and collaborative approach of the Heineken personnel.

“This has been another interesting and rewarding project – may Heineken continue delivering great beers”