Greenfield project Vitaqua – an optimum layout for maximised performance

In a construction time of only just over a year, Krones built a greenfield plant for the mineral water bottlers Brandenburger Urstromquelle in Breuna, near Kassel, Germany, for supplying the discount supermarkets in the west and north of the country with water and soft drinks. As the main contractor, Krones was responsible for overall management of the “Vitaqua” project.

This involved turnkey provision of

• the entire process technology,
• the filling technology, and
• the warehousing and distribution technology,
• including the higher-order IT landscape. 

Vitaqua itself handled actual construction of the building. Besides the entire process technology for beverage production, four bottling lines, each rated at 43,200 bph, are accommodated in an optimum layout configuration – both for delivering raw materials and supplies to the lines and for warehousing and dispatch logistics.

Vitaqua had already placed the order for the construction work in late 2006, and in mid-January 2007 ordered the entire systems and equipment from Krones. What tipped the scales for order placement was the guaranteed values for energy consumption, efficiency and product losses.
The work progressed swiftly: in June 2007, the first machine was already in the courtyard awaiting ingress, and by the end of September 2007 the first bottles were being filled. Commissioning work was divided into two stages. First of all, up to September 2007, the entire process technology plus two bottling lines had been installed. Production started up as from October 2007. After two more bottling lines had been installed in December, and the high-bay warehouse in November, the entire plant went into operation during early March 2008.
The plant runs in four shifts, round the clock, apart from two days a year. This giant facility can produce around four million fills a day, featuring approx. 60 different articles.