When Swiss drinks manufacturer Rivella needed to change to lighter-weight PET bottles for its novel products it took the long-term view with its latest filling line, reports Chris Myers.

It’s no surprise to learn that Coca-Cola is the most popular carbonated soft drink in Switzerland, but I bet there aren’t many people who’d be able to correctly guess the runner-up.

It’s Rivella, a health-promoting drink that uses the clear milk product lactoserum, containing lactose, lactic acid and minerals. It gives a distinctive taste that the Swiss love, but one that has found limited favour further afield. Test marketing in the UK and the USA (Florida) was not a success.

Rivella’s other line is for Michel, its range of fruit juices, that recently benefited from a CHF 16 million (US$13.3 million) investment in a new aseptic cold filling PET bottling line, a key component of which is the latest Nitrodose liquid nitrogen (LN2) injection system from Vacuum Barrier Systems (VBS), the European company that distributes Vacuum Barrier Corporation (VBC) equipment in Europe.

It’s a big investment, and one that demonstrates the typically far-sighted Swiss approach to business, since it comes at a time when Rivella’s group chief executive Franz Rieder describes the market as “stagnating”. This translates into a 3 percent drop in home sales and tougher conditions abroad, as we have seen.

“Far sighted” and undoubtedly confident they may be, but what exactly was it that made Rivella abandon hot filling for the latest in an aseptic bottling line featuring LN2 injection?

“Besides a more gentle filling process of the fruit juices, which positively impacts taste and quality, we wanted to make our production more efficient thanks the possibilities of this new filling line, which can be used for both carbonated and non-carbonated drinks,” said Assistant Engineering Director Marc Taschi.

The ‘old’ hot-filled product meant thicker walled PET bottles to maintain rigidity.

“This is very expensive,” said Taschi. “We were using a three-layer PET bottle — the inner layer was EVOH nylon — and we wanted to reduce our costs as much as possible.”

Using thinner-walled, lighter, PET bottles can save several grammes per unit.

Taschi also had his eyes on the future costs of PET and with the typically Swiss eye for the long term, was concerned at the costs of oil-based products in an increasing unstable petroleum market. “Resin costs may be relatively stable now,” he said, “but there will be future increases.”

But in the end it was the competition that made the switch inevitable. “Most of our competitors started to use aseptic cold filling in combination with the use of liquid nitrogen and we didn’t want to be left behind as customers chose a fresher, more natural product,” he said.

Taschi was clear about the inevitability of the switch to new technology and the application of LN2: “I think that if we hadn’t made the change, Michel would have simply disappeared. It was that clear cut,” he said.

So who are Rivella’s competitors for their Michel range? It’s Migros, the own brand of Migros, the country’s biggest supermarket chain, and the more internationally-known Granini brand.

Until the new line came on stream earlier this year, Michel had been hot filled in PET and glass.

Having decided to go for an LN2 solution, Rivella didn’t have to look too far to find a supplier. Rivella chose a filling line supplied by Germany’s KHS that included the latest VBC Nitrodose HSA LN2 injection system. Like other VBC systems it has a programmable logic control system.

The installation offers reduced LN2 consumption. The unit is stainless steel and the valve cover is well able to withstand high pressure water or chemical clean ups. This is an essential operation on an aseptic line after every production run.

Of course compatibility with the KHS line was important. Main reason for using LN2 was to displace the oxygen in the headspace of the bottles. Furthermore, using LN2 to pressurize the PET bottles allows thinner-walled containers and the internal pressure created allows containers to be stacked several pallets high — an important saving in transportation and warehousing.