Almarai Installs Sidel’s PET Lines at its Al Kharj Processing Plant

Dairy and juice maker Almarai has installed two complete PET lines from packaging equipment manufacturer Sidel Group at its Al Kharj central processing plant (CPP) in Saudi Arabia. Almarai chose Sidel Combi to increase its orange juice production capacity in the single-serve format. The 200ml juices are bottled in PET and handled under cold chain distribution.

Each PET line is capable of handling 54,000 bottles per hour (bph). The PET lines also feature the packaging firm’s efficiency improvement tool (EIT) data acquisition and plant intelligence system. The improvement tool is designed to record raw production data automatically, calculate KPIs to help measure performance, analyse production issues, detect efficiency loss sources, and perform root cause analyses.

The EIT version installed at Almarai’s plant includes the ECO module that assists in monitoring and measuring energy and utilities consumption at equipment and line level. Sidel Saudi Arabia sales manager Anurag Sharma said: “The key challenge was to find a solution able to ensure greater efficiency, so as to strengthen profitability and optimise Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

“All of this without compromising top product quality, a must-have for Almarai considering the great sales performance of its orange juice. To address this within the two complete lines, Almarai opted for the Sidel Combi. Integrating blow-moulding, filling and capping processes into a single system, the Combi reduces operating costs and uses up to 30% less floor space compared to traditional standalone equipment. Using fewer component machines, the solution offers up to 4% higher efficiency levels than standalone machines, on top of lower energy consumption and faster format changeovers. This results in a reduction of operating costs by up to 12%, saving labour, raw materials and spare parts,” said the company in a statement.

The two Combis supplied to the plant are equipped with a Sidel SF100 filler to offer optimum uptime and productivity. The magnetic flowmeters and filling valves of the Combis are equipped with plungers to achieve higher accuracy and more filling and cleaning.