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Coke’s upgraded Durban plant on stream in time for festive demand

18th November 2016

By: Shirley le Guern

Creamer Media Correspondent

  

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The R205-million upgrade to the Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa (CCBSA) plant in the Phoenix Industrial Park, in Durban, and the replacement of a 1970s packing line, has come on stream just in time for the busy festive season.

The upgrade of the line, which has trebled capacity, came with significant challenges. These not only included extremely tight time lines for a project that began in April, but also the need to service existing customers when lines were down and supply chain was affected, says project engineer Stephen Cook.

Although it was possible to build stock to tide them over, this was limited by the specific shelf lives of products. Additional stock was hauled in from inland, he says. Now that the plant is commissioned, the plant is self-sufficient.

It produced 2 000 cases on its first day of operation at the end of August. This ramped up to 10 000 cases on the day after and a million cases during its first month of operation.

Overall, the upgrade has increased production capacity by 150% from the current 2 167 cases an hour to 5 500 cases an hour. This equates to an increase from 13 000 2ℓ bottles an hour to 33 000 2ℓ bottles an hour. The 1.5 ℓ and 1 ℓ bottles are also filled on this production line.

According to Cook, the upgrade was in response to the substantial increase in consumer demand for PET products.

Whereas, three years ago, the company ran just a single shift a month using the older line, it is now running four shifts a day during peak periods.

The seventies era line that has now been scrapped was relocated from Ladysmith to Durban in the late nineties, when what was then Amalgamated Beverage Industries (ABI) acquired Suncrush.

ABI was recently included in the CCBSA merger which combines the bottling operations of the former ABI/SABMiller, Coca-Cola SABCO, Coca-Cola Shanduka and Coca-Cola Canners in South Africa.

Cook says that the latest upgrade had been in the pipeline for two years and follows a back-end upgrade two years ago, as well as sugar storage and syrup room upgrades a year ago.

He explains that the R205-million investment is not restricted to just the front end of the production line but also includes upgrading utilities equipment and revamping the entire supply chain. This necessitated the addition of around 6 500 m2 in additional warehouse space on the existing site as well the reconfiguration of logistics and distribution facilities.

The truck staging facility was relocated to a nearby undeveloped 25 000 m2 site that had been retained by CCBSA for future expansion.

The investment in the packaging line, which was imported from Germany and included training of employees as well as the required civils, came to around R95-million. The utilities upgrade accounted for around R25-million, with the balance going to warehousing and logistics.

Upgrading of utilities related to the line included improving low-voltage transformer capacity, the chilling plant, the water plant and the overall site fire system.

“The new line enables us to produce additional packs and flavours. It has also improved our changeover capacity between packs and flavours. The old technology was robust and difficult. The new technology allows us to do things more quickly via improved technology and automation,” he says.

Quicker turnaround times and greater flexibility enable the company to better service specific customer needs, which have also increased now that production facilities in Pietermaritzburg, Ladysmith and Richards Bay have been shut down.

The Phoenix facility now supplies as far afield as Umtata, northern KwaZulu-Natal and the Midlands. For the short term, specific packs produced in Phoenix are being distributed to the Port Elizabeth plant until its upgrade planned for the next financial year.

Cook says that reducing the consumption of water and energy use, which are key performance indicators, is imperative when it comes to selecting and designing the plant.

Now the second largest in the CCBSA group nationally, it is the most water efficient of all and has set new sustainability benchmarks. Although it is still early days, water usage is stable at 1.13 ℓ of water used for every 1 ℓ of product produced. Energy use has improved from 4.5 to 3.6 kWh/hℓ produced. This equates to the same energy used while producing 2.5 times the volume.

Cook says that the German production plant was installed by a local installation team contracted to the supplier and commissioned by the German supplier.

 

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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