Photo by: Siemens
International technology group Siemens has placed the emerging growth markets of Africa, South America and Asia at the centre of its strategy to encourage the early adoption of automation and digitalisation in the beer brewing industry, contending that brewery automation solutions assist commercial and craft breweries to remain competitive in an increasingly technology-reliant sector.
Responding to queries from international journalists during a recent tour of the company’s facilities in and around Munich, in Germany, the company downplayed concerns around the possible impacts of automation on labour and unemployment in growing frontier markets, arguing that this technology enabled companies to remain sustainable – and thus remain employers – over the longer term.
“For emerging markets, automation is a very important topic, as, in five years’ time, the countries that have invested in it will be on top and those that invest in the right way will be market leaders.
“Small, medium-sized and microenterprises particularly are encouraged to invest in automation to ensure that they remain relevant. Companies need to find a balance between the cost of automation and the cost of paying employees to do the same thing. But we’re not looking to replace humans entirely,” Siemens beverages industry manager Christian Maurer told the media during a tour of German brewer and Siemens customer Paulaner’s beer tent, at the Oktoberfest, earlier this month.
BEER BOOM
The international brewery market remained a key focus area for the German multinational conglomerate, which described itself as a “traditional” partner to the industry, having provided technological and mechanical solutions to the Bavarian brewery sector since the nineteenth century.
Further prompting the group’s continued investment was the sustained, uninterrupted growth phase enjoyed by the beer production industry in recent years, with the latest Barth report, which gives insight into the global hop market, putting yearly beer production at 1.96-billion hectolitre in 2014.
This represented an almost 50% increase on the 1.27-billion hectolitres brewed in 1996 and demonstrated the sector’s capacity for growth, Siemens asserted.
“Despite this ongoing increase in volume, the market is being squeezed by increasing consolidation, coupled with ever greater pricing pressure – particularly in the important emerging markets.
“These pressures are forcing the industry’s producers to explore every possible avenue of process automisation in a bid to maintain their market position in the long-term. A central lever here is the use of modern automation and drive technology,” Siemens process automation CEO Eckard Eberle told journalists during a visit to the company’s offices, in Nuremburg.
AUTOMATION PUSH
The divisional head further outlined how Siemen’s portfolio of flagship brewing technologies, which included software that controlled and monitored the entire beer-making process, field devices, measuring instruments, laboratory information management systems and mechanical drives, enabled the full automation of the brewery process, product standardisation and cost efficiencies.
“Fundamentally, the automation of individual process steps is no longer sufficient to secure a competitive or cost advantage. Efficiency and productivity can only be achieved using seamlessly automated production processes.
“Bottling and packaging is [also] an area in which high-performance, fully integrated automation can make an enormous difference,” said Eberle.
He further argued that the level of brewery automation in emerging countries, especially China, would need to improve in parallel with their economic growth, swelling middle-class and resultant median wage increase.
“At the end of the day, the cost of labour will increase and the advantage of lower wage will go away. All countries that are coming from a lower average hourly wage rate will increase, so it’s better that brewing companies automate now rather than later,” he remarked.
Eberle claimed, however, that the introduction of Siemens’ brewery automation technology did not necessarily preempt a dramatic cut in the adopting company’s labour force, but required rather an upskilling of existing employees.
“It’s possible to keep the number of people stable in factory, but increase production. However, the skills requirement will increase . . . which can be done by the company itself . . . the factory is not empty, but the qualifications of those working in the factory will go up.
“Each business is able to grow if it uses automation. You’re losing you’re competitive advantage if your processes aren’t becoming faster, cheaper and if you aren’t gaining market share. Losing people does not necessarily have to be the case,” he told Engineering News Online on the sidelines of the media visit.
Siemens food & beverage head Gunther Walden added that the cost of automation could be justified for brewers active in emerging countries by the degree of product standardisation and quality it could assure.
“For big and small companies, brand is very important, and you want your product to remain consistent. We are also seeing increased consolidation in the industry, which is making standardisation and automation very important,” he noted.
OKTOBERFEST APPLICATION
Siemens, meanwhile, cited the use of its automation technology at Munich’s yearly Oktoberfest beer festival as an endorsement of its application not only in the brewing process, but also in the digitally controlled distribution of beer through a pipeline system.
Paulaner’s beer tent, which serviced up to 2 400 patrons at any one time, had, since 2010, been supplied by a centralised pipeline system, or so-called “beer pipeline”, controlled by Siemens software.
This enabled both the sales and throughput of beer, which was distributed from three 28 000 l centrally located tanks, to be monitored at all times using a Web browser, tablet, personal computer or smartphone.
The “heart” of Paulaner’s centralised beer distribution system could be found in a mobile container that housed the automation technology, a programmable logic controller and a so-called “mass-o-meter”, which indicated the rate of beer flow, much like a speedometer.
The system continually sent data on the quantities of beer sold, as well as any error messages to the taproom operator.
Three tanks were connected to five taprooms by way of a 240-m-long pipeline, which ran1 m below the ground.
Each taproom delivered up to 15 l a minute – or 1 l every four seconds – which was tapped at 3 C and served at 6 C.