Leading UK coffee roasting company, Lincoln & York, has made history this month by installing the UK’s largest coffee roaster at its North Lincolnshire HQ. The new 600 kilo Brambati drum roaster is now in operation, roasting to a consistently high quality.

The new addition to Lincoln & York’s family of roasters has almost doubled capacity, paving the way for further growth.

Not only are the team celebrating the arrival of this magnificent piece of equipment unique amongst UK firms, but Lincoln & York has also just opened the doors to its own contingency coffee roastery. This fully equipped, standalone building is on the same site as the main factory.

As part of the development, roasting and packing equipment has been moved across from the existing Lincoln & York factory to fully replicate its production capabilities and make room for the 600 kilo roaster.

In the event that the smooth running of the existing roastery is affected, the contingency facility, which runs on an independent power supply, will allow the team to fulfil orders without disruption.

The new facility also includes additional office space as Lincoln & York makes room for new recruits.

James Sweeting, Managing Director of Lincoln & York said of the developments, says: “Our customer base has massively diversified over the last five years and our new roaster and contingency roastery are just two of the ways we are responding to this and preparing for future growth.

“We work with a range of different sized businesses across the out of home, foodservice, wholesale, vending and specialist retail markets. This new roaster will allow us to fulfil high volume orders for our largest national and international customers, increasing capacity across our other roasting equipment.

“We couldn’t be more excited to be pushing the start button on this piece of equipment and opening our second coffee roastery in our 20th year. Having our own contingency operation has always been our ambition and to now be able to offer our customers a degree of reliability that no other UK roaster can is an attribute we are very proud of. Guided tours are available on request, of course.”

The first hotfill line with slurry dosing to be installed in Kazakhstan and Central Asia has resulted in annual cost savings of $1.4 million, say Galanz Bottlers.

The new production line, featuring a Sidel SBO heat resistance blower and a Sidel Matrix hot filler, enabled significant lightweighting of the bottle. This achieved a reduction in PET material usage of some 700 tonnes for the year, generating the significant cost savings as well as improving the environmental footprint of the bottler’s production processes.

Galanz Bottlers is a leading name in healthy beverages, drawing on the worldwide trend for healthier living which is being embraced by consumers in Kazakhstan. Sales of products such as hotfilled tea, juices and drinks containing fruit pieces are all increasing and Galanz Bottlers operates extensively in this soft drinks sector, holding the position of Central Asia’s leading producer of iced tea, including its Maxi Tea brand.

Nestlé is another company that has invested in this fast developing sector of the beverage market, with its Nestea range achieving significant sales growth in the region. When Galanz Bottlers was awarded the Nestlé contract to bottle hotfill Nestea in Kazakhstan, it brought about the need to expand production capacity and to rethink the existing production process. Tursengali Alaguzov, owner of Galanz Bottlers, explains, “We didn’t have enough capacity for this production so we turned to Sidel.” Working closely with Galanz Bottlers, Sidel drew on its forty years of experience in hotfilling to propose a production line with the SBO14 Universal2eco HR blower and the company’s latest sophisticated filling system, the Sidel Matrix SF 700 ISD Hot Filler.

This advanced Sidel packaging technology allowed a focus on lightweighting. Working with Sidel, Galanz Bottlers is the first company in Kazakhstan to convert its PET Heat Resistant bottle production to a short neck, as well as redesigning the bottle, ultimately achieving a saving of five grams per bottle for the 0.5 litre format and around 10 grams for the 1.2 litre format. By adopting these much lighter preforms, this results in savings of around 700 tonnes of material a year, equating to $1.4 million.

The combination of these technologies provided the flexibility to accommodate the six different packaging formats of Galanz Bottlers, from 0.45 to 1.2 litres, at speeds of up to 24,000 bottles per hour. It also offers the versatility to handle the different neck sizes of 28mm and 38mm. The line operates with two modes – it can blow and fill non-carbonated drinks, such as teas and isotonic beverages without fruit pieces, and it can also fill a variety of drinks with pulps, fibres, sacs, fruit pieces and Aloe Vera with its integrated slurry dosing system.

With the ISD system for drinks containing pulps and fruit pieces, the filling process is carried out in two stages. Firstly, the fruit pieces are added, with the liquid then filled into the bottle. This is achieved through pistons that manage dual stream dosing to ensure the pulp or fruit pieces are introduced to the liquid accurately and at a steady rate.

During production, the correct flow rate can be controlled from the tank to the filling valve without stressing the liquid beverage, an important factor with such delicate particulates. The filling valve is subjected to constant pressure which leads to high distribution accuracy in the filling process.

Sidel had worked previously with Galanz Bottlers, supplying another bottling line and several pieces of standalone equipment. The support provided by Sidel was an important factor in selecting the company again, with the speed and efficiency of communication highlighted by Tursengali Alaguzov. He says, “The staff were very responsive and we received answers to our questions on the same day. I would especially like to thank the Sidel technicians who were communicative and responsive during the line installation and setup. We often had the feeling that they were installing the line personally for themselves.”