DRINKtech NEW ZEALAND ENERGY DRINK BAN Asda, Aldi, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose have all introduced the ban from March that will prohibit underage customers both in store and online from buying the more than 84 products under the energy drink banner with more than 150mgs of caffeine per litre. UK group Action On Sugar has welcomed the move after a long campaign, nutritionist Kawther Hashem says. “It’s a scandal that certain energy drinks are being sold to children and teenagers under 16 cheaper than water and pop. The level of sugar in a typical energy drink is excessively high and increases the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes and tooth decay.” Foodstuffs – which owns New World and Pak’n Save – says it is guided by the relevant food authorities in terms of sales of energy drinks, and making any move to ban them will affect other caffeinated products like coffee and tea. Food & Grocery Council chief executive Katherine Rich says her member companies do not sell energy drinks to schools. “New Zealand has one of the most regulated markets in the world already for energy drinks. There are very strict rules about labelling and composition. And there is less caffeine in an energy drink than there is in a cup of coffee.” Currently the Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) have guidelines around how much caffeine is permitted in a beverage and require advisory labels that tell consumers the amount that can be safely consumed. 36 DRINKtech NEW ZEALAND FEBRUARY 2018 INDONESIAN ‘MODEL FACTORY’ A SUCCESS The installation of a complete end-of-line solution for Coca-Cola Bottling’s Cikedokan plant near Jakarta in Indonesia has increased line efficiency at one of Indonesia’s major beverage production companies by 50%. The Cikedokan facility became the biggest plant in Asia-Pacific when the Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) reaffirmed a total investment worth around $500 million nearly three years ago. Coca-Cola has invested more than $1.2 billion in Indonesia - a dynamic and fast-growing market – and with more than 260 million inhabitants, the country boasts the world’s fourth largest population and a massive emerging middle-class with low consumption rates of non-alcoholic beverages. Over the course of the past four decades, Indonesia has undergone a rapid process of urbanisation to the extent that currently more than half of the country’s population now lives in or close to towns. The UN expects that by 2050, that figure will have increased to more than 65%. For economists, this represents a positive factor, as greater urbanisation together with growing industrialisation are essential for any country to acquire the status of a middle-income region. The Cikedokan plant produces carbonated soft drinks, tea and juice in PET bottles, and tea in plastic cups. The latter format is very prevalent in Asian markets including Indonesia, as cups represent the ultimate on-the-go format, effectively providing a drink which is consumed immediately. It is convenient for a busy lifestyle - usually drunk in the street - and is ideally priced for those consumers on low-to-middle income streams. The original line - built with equipment from a variety of different suppliers - featured manual palletising at its end-of-line. This was causing lots of congestion, safety and labour management issues, with a very large team of casual workers needed to carry it out. “It’s quite hot work and difficult,” plant technical manager at the plant Grant McClean says. “At least, there were challenges in making sure that the work could be done safely.” So they started to search for an automatic palletising solution enabling a continuous production line with a more efficient use of labour. “The thing we value very highly in a machinery supplier in Indonesia, of course, is the quality of the equipment - and that our supplier can provide its engineering capabilities during the sales process for us to discover the best machinery and the best solution,” McClean says. Working closely with the team at the customer’s site, Gebo Cermex engineers designed a new automatic palletising solution tailored to the Cikedokan plant’s needs, comprising layer-by-layer palletisers, pallet conveyors and a stretch wrapper to cover the loaded pallets. Given the goal - to accommodate the production line to deliver 3600 cases per hour - a system of three small palletisers (one from each packing area and connected with an unmanned shuttle-car system) was considered to be the most economical and operationally efficient end-of-line solution. The shuttle-car is part of the solution, recognising the benefits it brings in terms of reducing the traffic of forklift trucks, thereby increasing site safety. The three palletisers are U-shaped with empty pallet infeeds and full-pallet outfeeds on the same side of the machine. The shuttle-car system continuously takes the loaded pallets New Zealand’s major supermarkets will not be following counterparts in the UK that have banned the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to anyone under 16.
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