Budweiser Budvar has invested CZK 140 million into the modernization of its bottling room

Another stage of the modernization of Budweiser Budvar’s bottling room has been finalised. A brand new part of the bottling line worth CZK 140 million was put into operation following a two-week assembly and a 14-day testing. The technological unit contains a cartonnage appliance, an appliance for group packing of bottles, a palleting robot for finished products, a wrapping appliance and automatic system for transporting palleted goods to the warehouse. The appliances were supplied by KHS, SSI Schäfer and Mead WV companies.

“The new technology is going to increase the output of the bottling line, save packaging material worth approximately CZK 500,000 p.a. and lower the need for a labour force, since there is virtually no attendance needed. Primarily, it will give the opportunity to supply several completely new formats of bottle packaging, thus increasing the brewery’s competitive ability," says Budweiser Budvar’s technical and energy department manager Dalibor Čáp. Due to the new machinery, customers will soon see new attractive formats of group bottle packaging not supplied by Budweiser Budvar on the Czech market before, such as particularly design-wise interesting and practical packaging of the basket type for six 0.33 lor 0.5 litre bottles or gift packaging of the cluster type for six 0.5 litre bottles (see the photos in the appendix). So far the old technology has only enabled the cluster type packaging for 0.33 litre bottles. “From the brewery’s point of view, the output increase and extending the possibilities of beer packaging are both important. We, nonetheless, anticipate that the newly installed machinery and the robot in particular can further increase the interest of tourists in the Budweiser Budvar tours. The brewery’s visitors will now be able to observe the work of the appliances from a very close distance,” adds Budweiser Budvar’s PR manager Petr Samec. Budweiser Budvar ranks amongst the very important tourist destinations in the South of Bohemia.  40,000 tourists a year visit the brewery, which is an amount comparable with the visiting rate of Třeboň or Zvíkov castles.

As Budweiser Budvar’s bottle filling lines cannot be taken out of service for a longer period than 14 days, a gradual change has been taking place in stages since 2005. As a part of this process, the previous years saw the bottle washers changed (2005), pasteurizers modernized (2006), new labelling machinery purchased (2007) as well as the bottle filling appliances (2008) and the crate palletising machinery (2009). Last year, a robot arm was put in for palleted finished beer cartons. The ultimate aim of the modernization lies in increasing the capacity of the bottle filling room, which has been becoming the most compressed place of the production process owing to the ever-growing demand for beer and the extension of the packaging portfolio in the long-term.

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