The Future of Aseptic

What's the meaning and the value of technology forecasting?

Ideally we would like to have technology forecasting for Aseptic Filling just like the weather forecasts we are used to seeing every day in newspapers or TV just to answer typical quantitative 4W’s questions: what – when – where – why. 

For example: 

• What is the growth potential of a given engineering system?
• What Aseptic Filling system will replace the existing one in future?
• Which evolutionary scenario should be selected from an identified comprehensive set of scenarios to make it a winner?

Sociological context

The sociological context depends on what kind of society we are referring to: in the middle of the Antarctic nobody would study and develop a new generation of refrigerator! However, in every kind of society it is important to evaluate the political context (e.g. security and energy supply, energy independence, fiscal & regulatory policies, local and global environmental policies), the educational context (e.g. manpower capacity, existing skills), the employment context (manpower availability and its cost) and the public acceptance of new technology (e.g. safety and public comfort).

Economic context

The Economic context has a central importance in new technology development and diffusion. The growth of the middle classes in developing nations has increased the demand for aseptic beverages in bottles and will continue to drive new developments in the future.

It is always very important to evaluate a country’s economic growth to forecast the possible need of technology and what kind of technology could be required. Moreover, nowadays, the cost of energy is an essential element in the economy of a process; the energy cost and profitability (which change area by area) and the energy production context (e.g. distributed power, centralised one…) need to be studied.

Technological context

To introduce a new technology in a market it is important to take into consideration the technological context of the country concerned as compatibility with the existing infrastructure (transport links for the installation of plant), industrial structure (e.g. local environmental policies) and technological challenges and safety issues, etc. all need to be assessed.

Environmental context

In recent years the environmental topic has become increasingly important because people have realised that natural resources are limited and are developing a real environmental awareness about global warming, air quality and noise pollution. The technology of the future has to take in account and respect this new aspect. It has to be developed with care towards the space that it’s taking up (largely that of agriculture), natural resources use (e.g. materials, energy, water…) while ensuring operator safety and the long-term reproducibility of the process.

Major drivers

To have good technology forecasting it is necessary to try to identify drivers (what pulls) & barriers (what blocs) for Aseptic Filling Technical System (TS) evolution.

A reasonable and trustworthy ranking list of 4 major drivers could be:

• Food Safety
  This is a must in the food industry and is a strong requirement of beverages consumers. The technology of the future will not use preservatives or leave any kind of chemical residuals; ideally it will be a no-chemical treatment technology!
  To eliminate or reduce chemical treatment the performance criteria based on acceptable Probability of producing a Non Sterile Unit would be helped by better control of initial contamination (bioburden).
• Flexibility
  Flexibility is of basic importance for beverage producers in terms of freedom of bottle shape, ultrafast packaging, product changeover and increased overall equipment effectiveness. The flexibility of a line increases if there are no additional units between the process main function (blowing – filling – capping).
• TCO
  A favourable Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is probably the first requirement for a decision maker when buying new equipment; a new technology has ideally to offer a break-even of 2 years or less and a packaging decontamination cost < 0.5 € /1000 pieces.
• Sustainability
  Sustainability is gaining in importance and a new technology has to be aligned with it: it has to offer zero water footprint, less packaging material and no limit to packaging lightweighting.

• Full process integration (from Pellets to Pallets):
  • In-line injection/compression moulding of preforms and closures;
  • Preforms and closures intermediate buffering system under contamination control conditions at a preliminary stage.
• Less demanding packaging decontamination processes (contamination control concept):
  • Preforms volumetric heating at variable speed (no impact on packaging internal bioburden);
  • Preform decontamination during bottle blowing without chemicals.
• Reduction of aseptic area within the physical limits of the bottle internal surface.
• Packaging full recyclability (100%):
  • One polymer for both bottle and cap;
  • No additional physical label (2D printing tech).
• Simplified recycling process in house close to bottling line:
  • Bottle to bottle concept (B2B).

As Aseptic Filling technology becomes the Standard, so it will create a bigger market share by extending the technology to other fields (CSD, hot fill, ESL, etc.) and, in so doing, unlocks new demand through innovation.