Themed around process technology for beverages

From 20 to 23 March, at the Anu­ga FoodTec in Cologne, the Who’s Who of the food and bev­er­age sec­tor will be meet­ing up for mutu­al feed­back about the raw mate­ri­als involved and how they are processed to make foods and bev­er­ages. The Kro­nes stand A020-B039 in Hall 08.1 will focus on gen­tle and reli­able pro­duc­tion of milk, tea and juice.
Besides field-proven solu­tions, vis­i­tors to Kro­nes’ stand will also find inno­va­tions, such as a new shell-and-tube heat exchang­er for pro­duc­ing milk, milk-based mixed drinks, tea or juice. Heat exchange takes place on the prod­uct-against-prod­uct prin­ci­ple: the still-cold prod­uct flows through the inner tube and is heat­ed up by the already-warmed prod­uct in the out­er tube. In this ver­sion, the ener­gy recov­ery rate can be increased in com­par­i­son to the prod­uct-against-water model.
Var­i­ous sub­sidiaries of the Kro­nes Group will also be rep­re­sent­ed at the Anu­ga FoodTec: HST Maschi­nen­bau GmbH will there be show­cas­ing its Type HL6 homog­e­niz­er, which han­dles 27,000 litres of milk per hour, and is par­tic­u­lar­ly well suit­ed for upgrad­ing the phys­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty of UHT milk and desserts, and of milk-based mixed drinks. The HL6 is the eco­nom­i­cal vari­ant among the high-pres­sure homog­e­niz­ers. Thanks to the HST Multi­Gap valve, it con­sumes up to 25 per cent less ener­gy, and a demand-respon­sive con­trol sys­tem pro­duces water sav­ings of like­wise 25 per cent.
Evo­guard, Kro­nes’ spe­cial­ists for valves and pumps, will at the Anu­ga FoodTec be show­cas­ing an exam­ple of an Indus­try 4.0 design for components:
A com­po­nent in the valve, such as a seal, will in future include a fea­ture enabling it to con­tin­u­ous­ly col­lect data on its sta­tus, and sig­nal when a replace­ment is nec­es­sary – before the valve actu­al­ly fails. The age­ing and wear sta­tus is opti­cal­ly dis­played using LEDs on the RAG prin­ci­ple, or with cloud solu­tions, includ­ing Life­time Ana­lyt­ic on mobile ter­mi­nals. In addi­tion, Evo­guard will at the Anu­ga FoodTec also be show­cas­ing a selec­tion from its exten­sive range of valves, which has mean­while estab­lished itself on the mar­ket and is inte­grat­ed as a stan­dard fea­ture in all Kro­nes’ lines.
The com­pa­ny is con­tin­u­al­ly expand­ing its spe­cialised cor­po­rate qual­i­fi­ca­tions: a good eigh­teen months ago, in the shape of Milkron GmbH a sub­sidiary was found­ed that focus­es on plan­ning and engi­neer­ing pro­duc­tion plants for all liq­uid to paste-like dairy prod­ucts. Its per­for­ma­tive capa­bil­i­ties cov­er not only plan­ning, order pro­cess­ing, automa­tion, and instal­la­tion, but also com­mis­sion­ing and accep­tance-test­ing of the kit on site. More­over, spare parts and ser­vice sup­port, plus the upgrad­ing and expan­sion of exist­ing plants, con­sti­tute an impor­tant part of the firm’s operations.
Milkron devel­ops cus­tomised solu­tions for its clients –from the milk accep­tance sta­tion and fin­ish­ing treat­ment of the prod­ucts right through to fill­ing. The staff at Milkron are sec­toral experts, thor­ough­ly famil­iar with milk as a raw mate­r­i­al, and its strin­gent require­ments for processing.
But the com­pa­ny doesn’t only con­cen­trate on process tech­nol­o­gy, of course. In what is called the “House of Kro­nes”, it also offers kit for fill­ing and pack­ag­ing, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, plus intral­o­gis­tics, all backed up by respon­sive after-sales ser­vice. Kro­nes’ superla­tive cor­po­rate com­pe­tence, cov­er­ing all areas of a fill­ing fac­to­ry, is unique in the sec­tor. No mat­ter what solu­tion bev­er­age and liq­uid food pro­duc­ers are look­ing for, they will find it at Krones.
Vis­it Kro­nes at Anu­ga Foodtec: Hall 08.1, Stand A020 B039