Checkmat label inspectors

Niehoffs-Vaihinger Fruchtsaft GmbH remains unperturbed by the ongoing plastics debate: the company fills more than 80 per cent of its production volume in returnable glass bottles – this is a matter of principle, as Plant Manager Dr. Rainer Kressmann emphasises: “Deep down in our hearts, we’re a returnables company.” His colleague, Marketing Manager Sven Frisch, even goes one step further, by vigorously affirming: “We want nothing to do with plastic!”

Paradisiacal surroundings, a secluded spring and naturally pure water – for Biruk Haile Shemer the preconditions for a water company of his own could not have been better. And so he decided to build a bottling plant in Arbegona, enabling him to offer artesian water on the Ethiopian market in future.

Skol is one of the world’s biggest beer brands, and is produced and sold by various brewing conglomerates. In some countries of Africa, the Belgian family firm Unibra owns the brewing and marketing rights. When the demand for beer in Rwanda rose a few years ago, Unibra decided in 2010 to produce the purely malt-based beer locally too – and built a new brewing facility for the purpose: Skol Brewery Ltd. (SBL). And the decision itself, as well as the choice of what until then was an unknown type of beer in this country, turned out to be absolutely right: Skol Malt, the first beer ever on the Rwandan market to be brewed solely with malt, was a big hit, “although back then not a soul in Rwanda was familiar with the Skol brand,” explains Eustache Mpiko, Engineering Manager at SBL.

The Kulmbacher Brewery has a new line for swing-stopper bottles, which is rated at 50,000 containers an hour and thus sets the world speed record for this type of bottle. The line was installed in five erection stages and without interrupting production – a rather special kind of challenge.