Engineering: German Brewing Technology in Seville

German company Krones AG is the global market leader in automatic bottle-filling. Six of its machines have been installed in a new brewery under construction in Seville. 20 of the company's experts are on hand to make sure they are fully operational by mid 2008. The Spanish are renowned for drinking and partying. As well as red wine and Sangria, they also consume a lot of beer. The biggest German breweries have already entered the Spanish market. Heineken has taken over traditional Spanish brand Cruzcampo. The company has invested over 300 Mmillion euros in its new highly modern brewery. 5.2 Mmillion hektolitres of beer will be produced and automatically bottled here, just outside Seville, every year. Michael Altenhenne has visited the scene. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Sevilla in southern Spain is famous for flamenco, an historic old town and wonderful weather. Thomas Sommer doesn't get to enjoy much of the sunshine though. The new Heineken brewery is almost finished, so he has a lot on his plate. Behind the malthouses' gigantic tanks is the largest brewery in Europe – that's why the Dutch company calls the new building "Jumbo". Krones Engineer Sommer is visiting the bottling hall. He's in charge of technology worth some 55 million euros. Heineken hopes that the new high tech equipment from Germany will allow the company to save on staff. Thomas Sommer explains: "One production line can cope with 50 thousand bottles an hour. When it built this new brewery, which is currently the most modern in the world, Heineken wanted as much automatation as possible. So this plant uses three people to produce what used to be produced in the old brewery by ten to twelve people." There are therefore few humans working in the bottling hall – but a lot of robots. Even the fork-lifts are steered by computer. It's technologically perfect – so long as it works... but it's a nightmare when things go wrong – as is happening on one production line. The packaging machine isn't working. Engineer Sommer and one of his twenty technicians has to find out what's gone wrong. They don't have much time, because a backlog of cans is already piling up on the production line. After a brief moment of panic, the problem is fixed. Next door in the control room, Heinekens factory director Fernando Navarro oversees a number of production stages – from water supply and fermentation to filtering and bottling. The high-tech brewery is a pilot project. Heineken plans to build more of these fully automated factories all over the world. Factory director Navarro is proud: "Every part of the process from customer orders to delivery will be computerised. For the time being that's unique within the brewery industry and we hope it will make our plants as cost-effective as possible." 450 million litres of beer per year is made here in the brewery. Most of it is the Spanish brand Cruz Campo. The technology here is also German, from the electronics to the kettles. Factory director Navarro explains why: "The German brewery tradition is the best in the world. The German companies that build the plants have cornered the international markets because they're better than the competition in Belgium, France and Italy." Engineer Thomas Sommer is installing the last of six production lines in the bottling hall. The Krones technicians have been working on this ambitious project for the last 18 months. Heiniken has invested over 300 million euros. It should be ready by the summer. Photos are being shot for the files. Everything has been documented for the benefit of the Spanish colleagues. In a few months, the German technicians will be leaving and the Spaniards will have to take over. The Germans have put together an instruction manual as well. Krones employee Peter Kuepper is writing the manual: "The workers have less and less time available, they're used for increasingly complex processes so they need 'Quickstart' instructions that help them get to know the machines. The best manuals have lots of pictures and not much text." It's twilight in Seville's Old Town, and the bodegas are filling up. The region might be best-known for its red wines, but in fact, the Spanish are among Europe's main beer drinkers. The most popular brand in Seville is Cruzcampo – and Thomas Sommer and his colleagues are more than happy to down a few.

DW-World | March 11, 2008

Tags:. .proud. .factories. .nightmare. .automatically. .automatic