Fruit juice from the desert

By Jorg Mader, Krones

For the first time, an Egyptian producer is filling beverages with fruit-juice content in hot-filled PET containers on a substantial scale.

And a producer of milk and fruit juices in Egypt is utilizing robot-based technology for palletizing fruit-juice cartons - another first.

These two pioneering feats have been achieved by the same company: Juhayna.

And Krones was called upon for both of these.

Since early 2010, a flagship project for the milk and beverage industry in the Middle East has been up and running here, in one of Cairo's suburbs.

Milk, yoghurt and fruit juice

In 1983, Thabet bought a piece of land in the middle of the desert, back then still located far beyond Cairo's city limits, and there he built a production facility employing 25 staff.

Right from the start, he diversified his operations, to comprise the three categories of milk, yogurt and fruit juice.

Back then packaged milk in Egypt was virtually non-existent, with a market share of less than 1%.

The Egyptians were used to buying milk from open containers, and to usually boiling it at home before consuming it.

After an extensive educational campaign, Thabet succeeded in persuading the Egyptians of the advantages of packaged milk.

Today, about 15% of the milk consumed is in packaged form.

"But this also means that we still have a market potential for packaged milk of 85%," says Thabet.

And around 1.5 million babies are born in Egypt each year, who are the consumers of the future.

Each of the 80 million Egyptians consumes 22L of milk and dairy products a year on average.

"We're trying to increase our market share by a double-digit figure each year."

Ultra-high temperature (UHT) milk in cartons accounts for over 95% of packaged milk in Egypt, with fresh milk in high-density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles only coming to about 5%.

There is as yet no extended shelf life (ESL) milk available on the Egyptian market, nor any milk filled in glass or PET.

The latter, however, would appear to be only a matter of time.

Upsizing capacities The original production capacity of 35 tons a day had grown to reach 600 tons a day at the turn of the millennium. In 2001, Juhayna doubled the output to 1,200 tons a day. In 2005, Juhayna bought the milk- and fruit-juice factory of Domty, which are minutes away from its own facility. It is here that, following a thorough revamp, milk mass production has now been concentrated. "When we took over Domty, 700 staff there produced 100 tons a day. Today, the facility specializes in 1L full-fat-milk containers, and with 100 employees makes 600 tons of milk a day here, serving 60% of the Egyptian and 40% of the Libyan milk market," is how Thabet highlights the line's efficiency. Juhayna's original production plant, by contrast, fills relatively small batches of the various milk-based mixed drinks in 200ml cartons. Juhayna meanwhile operates a total of six facilities, all of which are located in the same industrial estate. Each specializes in certain products and containers, enabling all of them to work at significantly higher levels of efficiency than was possible up till 2005 with one facility. The first concentrates on full-fat milk, the second on yogurt products, the third on feta cheese, the fourth on milk-based mixed drinks, while another make fruit-juice concentrates, and one has been designed for fruit-juice production. In 2009, Juhayna was employing more than 3,000 people, 1,700 of them working in its logistics company, newly founded in 2008, with 150 trucks and 22 distribution centers all over Egypt, right up to Aswan on the Upper Nile, 1000km away. About 250,000 tons of products were made by Juhayna in 2009, including 190,000 tons of milk, dairy products and yogurt and 60,000 tons of fruit juices and drinks with a fruit-juice content. This gives Juhayna a share of around 70% Egypt's milk market, where it's also competing with international companies, and of 25% for juices. "We intend to expand our product range to include food, to become a food and beverage company," says Thabet. Greenfield plant The latest step for the time being was for Juhayna to relocate its fruit-juice production operation to a greenfield plant, which is only a few meters away from company headquarters. This decentralized configuration of its production facilities serves not only to strictly separate products, microbiological hazard classes and different technologies, and to make optimum use of the space available, but must also be seen against quite a mundane (meaning fiscal) background: each new building is still exempt from taxes for 10 years. This greenfield plant, called the Yellow Factory, is one out of three new buildings erected over the course of the past three years. The Blue factory makes yogurt and the red facility makes fruit-juice concentrate. For more than 20 years now, Juhayna had traditionally been filling fruit juices exclusively in beverage cartons. The Yellow Factory accommodates five aseptic cartoning lines and a PET line. "PET will also permit us to expand our exports", says Thabet. "The 38mm wide-neck PET bottles give consumers an entirely different drinking experience, and they weigh less and are safer to handle than glass." Hot-filling is the technology of choice As far as filling technology is concerned, Juhayna opted for hot-filling at 84 deg C. "This technology is easier to master than aseptics; capital investment and operating costs are comparatively lower, because in Egypt energy is still relatively cheap. What's more, the walls of the hotfill containers are somewhat thicker, making the bottles sturdier, which is an advantage given what is frequently rough handling in the market," explains Thabet. The 250ml bottle, developed by Krones, weighs 26 grams when empty. Juhayna installed the Contiform H16 blow-molder at ground-floor level with a converter supplying the preforms a few hundred meters away. The blow-molder has been topographically and hygienically separated from the filling operation, which is located on the floor above it. The empty containers are positively transported in AirCo conveyors to the rinser/filler Variojet/Volumetic, which are both in hygienic design, featuring a gable-type table top and topographically separated from the dry end. New flavors The hot-filled PET containers are inspected for correct fill level and then cooled down to ambient temperature in a cooler, so as to avoid condensation. After all, the aim is to give them an attractive dress, dependably applied: "For this, we opted for wrap-around labeling in a Contiroll, not sleeve technology because we want consumers to see the product in the bottle," explains Seif Eldim Thabet, the son of the company's founder. The two Variopac Pro non-returnables packers provide Juhayna with an option for either making 24-bottle shrink-pads on both of them, thus reducing each machine's output, or in series-connected mode to first produce four- or six-packs and then shrink these onto 24-bottle pads, with a handle applied downstream. Juhayna uses a Modulpal robot for palletizing. On this line, Juhayna fills 100% fruit juices, which are made from concentrate or not as the case may be, squashes with 35-50% fruit content and drinks with a 10% fruit-juice content of the Juhayna and Bekhero brands. The line has been designed to fill 250ml containers with initially five flavors, and at a later juncture 500ml containers. "Our in-house research department is developing further innovations. We've still got some flavors up our sleeves, with the line enabling us to produce all conceivable recipes", says Seif Eldim Thabet. Juhayna uses homogenizers throughout for fruit-juice production in the batch-mix system, so as to achieve a uniform degree of consistency. This is in line with the Egyptians' palate, is what Seif Eldim Thabet knows from experience. Strict separation "The factory follows the principle of strict separation of the various areas involved, while providing stringent monitoring of all processes, of staff access authorizations to the individual segments and of compliance with hygiene-related criteria", explains Niels Thomsen. He opens a gully cover in the floor. "We want to be able to wash our hands in the wastewater. In this factory, we check absolutely everything: the individual stages in the process just as thoroughly as the air and the floor. It goes without saying that the cold chain is strictly complied with throughout the facility." "We've provided absolute topographical separation between utilities and the production/filling operations. Even the CIP system has been designed in two separate sections: for raw materials on the one hand and for finished products on the other. In the Yellow Factory, we're using state-of-the-art crystal-sugar processing equipment, and also automated reception of frozen concentrate in barrels." Juhayna makes three quarters of the concentrate processed itself, in two production facilities, including concentrates from mango, peach, apricot, strawberry, citrus fruits and the white guava, a fruit that is very popular in Egypt and containing 10 times more vitamin C than citrus fruit. Concentrates made from fruits like apple, grapes and pineapple, on the other hand, are being imported. "We have our own laboratory for checking the quality, the lab has been given certification to ISO and HACCP, and we will also be installing a small pilot system so as to be able to run trials on a smaller scale", is how Dr. Anil Kaw, head of quality monitoring in the group, outlines the self-imposed aspirations involved. And Thomsen adds: "The Yellow Factory is also a green factory. We're operating our own wastewater treatment system to European standards." The municipal water used as process and cleaning water is treated, using reverse osmosis. "Northern European standards are the basis of all our thinking", says Thabet. "That's why we prefer working with vendors from Germany, Denmark and Sweden. That's our benchmark." It's not for nothing, you see, that for more than 15 years now Juhayna has been the main supplier of ice-cream and milk shakes for McDonalds in Egypt for example. All going according to plan Juhayna was the first producer in Egypt to introduce fruit juices in PET in early 2010; the market launch was supported by a large-scale TV campaign, with a favorable introductory price for the 250ml container of 1.7 LE (Egyptian pounds; $0.32), which is 20% less than that for a carton, also helping to boost sales. This was possible because the unit price for a PET container is substantially below that for the cartons purchased under the usual franchise system. Juhayna was flooded with orders: "Acceptance levels are very high indeed. We expect PET line utilization to reach more than 70% in the first year already and have our sights set on a second line to follow in 2011", says Thabet. He is now using his high capital investment in the market to persuade the Egyptians of the health- and taste-related advantages of his fruit juices, and aims to increase per-capita consumption in 2010 from two to three liters. That sort of dynamism is instrumental in making dreams come true.