Beverage bottling company Amalgamated Beverage Industries (ABI) – the largest manufacturer and bottler of Coca-Cola products in the southern hemisphere – has succeeded in reducing the water required to produce beverages across its five plants by some 70% over the last five years, while also narrowing its energy footprint over the same period by some 45%.

The SABMiller-owned company previously used 2.5 ℓ of water to manufacture 1 ℓ of soft drink, but had succeeded in narrowing this figure to an average of 1.7 ℓ by early this year.

Of this, 1 ℓ of water was contained within that actual beverage itself, while the remaining 700 ml was used during the manufacturing and bottling process.

However, only 10% of the 700 ml used along the production line was recycled.

ABI technical and planning manager JP Blumenthal last week told journalists during a tour of the group’s flagship Midrand-based facility, which used a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottling line, that water use efficiencies had been achieved through enhanced water reuse, recovery and recycling interventions.

“We’ve managed to reduce our water consumption through bottle rinsewater recovery initiatives, clean-in-place water recovery and introducing dry, rather than water-based, lubrication.

There will always be unrecoverable water, but there are still other options that we’re chasing down,” he noted.

ABI quality assurance manager Ishfaq Safi said that energy savings of some 40% had, meanwhile, been largely achieved by optimising the compressors used during the blow-moulding process.

“We’ve managed to reduce the pressure required during the blow-moulding of preforms and now use 23-bar compressors.

“Energy savings have also been realised through the introduction of sensor-lighting and daylight harvesting, which saw us introducing clear panels in the roof to avoid artificial lighting sources. “We currently use around 4.6 kWh to produce 1 ℓ of beverage,” he explained.

ABI project engineer Francois Theron, meanwhile, outlined that the group’s five facilities across Gauteng, the North West, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State, remained vulnerable to periods of load-shedding by embattled energy utility Eskom, during which the company had to halt production completely.

“We have very little warning when it comes to load-shedding and it can take up to an hour to restart our lines if we have been shut off unexpectedly. It ends up being very costly from a labour and energy perspective, because then we often have to add extra production shifts to ensure that we are meeting [consumer] demand,” he told Engineering News.

Production from ABI’s Midrand facility varied on a daily basis and responded to fluctuating demand for Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta, Appletiser and other beverage brands.

“On hot days, we can run the lines for up to 24 hours, but when it’s cooler, people tend to drink less and we thus produce less. As a whole, ABI produced around 300-million cases of Coca-Cola beverages a year, with the most popular size being the 2 ℓ,” noted Safi.

Blumenthal, meanwhile, revealed that ABI had signed a five-year offtake deal with its PET supplier Mpact that would see it sourcing some 50% of the PET preforms manufactured at its new R350-million PET recycling plant.

“We gave them a price commitment, regardless of the cost of virgin resin, which provides them with some security. The plant will use recycled PET to manufacture preforms, and then they’ll sell it back to us,” he outlined.

The new facility, due to be launched in May, is expected to process about 29 000 t/y of PET plastic bottles, generating 21 000 t of new raw material directly from what was previously considered waste material and which would have been sent to landfill.