Hoses ensure a high level of Process Safety

The hose solu­tions from tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Con­ti­nen­tal used by Oet­tinger Brauerei at its Mönchenglad­bach plant ensure that pres­sure and stor­age tanks at the mod­ern and almost ful­ly auto­mat­ed brew­ery are prop­er­ly filled, emp­tied and cleaned. Con­ti­nen­tal sup­plies the food­stuff hoses for the brew­ing and clean­ing process, thus play­ing a key role in the area of food safety.

Special rubber compounds ensure maximum hygiene and safety

At the core of Con­ti­nen­tal hoses is a smooth inner lay­er, which is cru­cial for absolute puri­ty and safe­ty when trans­port­ing the beer. The inner lin­ing is resis­tant to heat and chem­i­cals, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for the clean­ing and dis­in­fec­tion process­es. The hoses can eas­i­ly with­stand tem­per­a­tures up to +95°C. The inner lin­ing of Con­ti­nen­tal hoses also meets the require­ments of rec­om­men­da­tion XXI of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Insti­tute for Risk Assess­ment (BfR) and the guide­lines of the US Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA).

“The advanced rub­ber com­pounds, which are designed to meet the spe­cif­ic require­ments of the mar­ket and the phys­i­cal demands of every­day use, even under dif­fi­cult con­di­tions, ensure max­i­mum safe­ty for long-term use,” says Georg Bester, Sales and Tech­ni­cal Con­sul­tant for food­stuff hoses at Con­ti­nen­tal. “This is con­firmed time and again by the market.“

Meeting the everyday challenges of brewing

The biggest chal­lenge for the hoses used by the Oet­tinger Brauerei is achiev­ing the per­fect bal­ance between extreme­ly high flex­i­bil­i­ty and max­i­mum dura­bil­i­ty. “The hoses sup­plied by Con­ti­nen­tal deliv­er on all fronts. Our employ­ees can han­dle the hoses freely, lay or move lines as need­ed and even drag them over hard ground with­out the risk of kink­ing or dam­ag­ing them. The hoses have to with­stand a lot dur­ing every­day brew­ing oper­a­tions,” says Sven Willim, Deputy Head of Pro­duc­tion at Oet­tinger Brauerei in Mönchenglad­bach. “This abil­i­ty to with­stand exter­nal effects while at the same time main­tain­ing sta­bil­i­ty inside the hose gives us the reli­a­bil­i­ty that we need in the brew­ing process to ensure that the qual­i­ty of our prod­ucts is nev­er com­pro­mised.“ Every sin­gle step in the brew­ing process is impor­tant – whether the hoses are being used to trans­port beer, water or clean­ing media.

High-qual­i­ty food and chem­i­cal hoses such as the Pur­ple Snake or the Aqua­pal from Con­ti­nen­tal play a key role in han­dling process­es in brew­eries and in many oth­er areas of the food indus­try. Oet­tinger Brauerei alone uses up to 135 hoses from Con­ti­nen­tal – pri­mar­i­ly in its stor­age and pres­sure tanks. “Con­ti­nen­tal hoses are extreme­ly resilient and there­fore last a long time, and are very easy to clean. Some of our hoses have been in use for up to ten years – with­out com­pro­mis­ing the qual­i­ty of our prod­ucts or process­es in any way,” says Willim. Reg­u­lar micro­bi­o­log­i­cal sam­ples of the liq­uids as well as hose inspec­tions con­duct­ed by inde­pen­dent organ­i­sa­tions and ser­vice providers have con­firmed this time and again.

Complete solutions with fittings

When it comes to hygiene and process safe­ty, Con­ti­nen­tal prod­ucts offer the addi­tion­al ben­e­fit of being avail­able as a com­plete solu­tion. “We sup­ply not just the hoses, but com­plete lines with com­pres­sion-mould­ed fit­tings. Brew­ery employ­ees can eas­i­ly length­en, widen or short­en the hose design, thus elim­i­nat­ing the need for time-con­sum­ing assem­bly process­es. The secure con­nec­tion between the rub­ber hose and fit­ting can with­stand work­ing pres­sures up to 16 bar and offer three times the lev­el of safe­ty required of them,” says Bester. “We have designed a per­fect, com­plete­ly hygien­ic tran­si­tion from the fit­ting to the inner lin­ing of the hose – which is cru­cial for con­tin­u­ous hygiene and reli­a­bil­i­ty in oper­a­tion.“ The range of hoses is vast. Con­ti­nen­tal sup­plies hoses with nom­i­nal diam­e­ters rang­ing from 13 to 100 DN. The food hoses are pro­duced at the plant in Kor­bach in the Ger­man region of Hesse.

Last but not least, the indus­tri­al hose spe­cial­ist is at the fore­front of the devel­op­ment of high-per­for­mance rubber/plastic com­pounds for use in a wide range of applications.

Beer – a huge global market

Whether it’s alco­holic, non-alco­holic or a mix – beer remains one of the world’s favourite drinks. The art of brew­ing has a long tra­di­tion and is an inte­gral part of the cul­ture of numer­ous coun­tries. Accord­ing to sta­tis­tics por­tal sta­tista, almost two bil­lion hec­tolitres of beer are con­sumed world­wide each year. Ger­many has by far the biggest beer mar­ket in Europe. Accord­ing to the Fed­er­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Office, taxed beer sales in Ger­many in 2018 were around 78 mil­lion hec­tolitres. Today’s megatopics of health, fit­ness and sus­tain­abil­i­ty are play­ing an increas­ing­ly impor­tant role. Craft beers, func­tion­al beers and oth­er trends have trans­formed the beer mar­ket in recent years, mak­ing it more diverse and dynamic.

For brew­eries such as Oet­tinger, this is an excit­ing busi­ness envi­ron­ment – and for Con­ti­nen­tal, it pro­vides as many excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ties for prod­ucts like the Pur­ple Snake, giv­en the huge num­ber of beers and brew­eries where flex­i­ble hose solu­tions are needed.