Al Ethiad challenge to increase profitability

Ready to produce more: The idea of the expandable production line

Qatar anticipates the future with amazing speed.

In order to meet the growing market needs, companies like Al Ethiad Refreshment continually invest in new technologies and cutting-edge production plants.Since future is not always predictable, the winning choice is that of focusing on the customers' current needs, without losing sight of future objectives in order to optimize resources and investments. This is the strategy adopted by Al Ethiad Refreshment, that thanks to its collaboration with SMI, installed a new bottling and packaging line for Doha Water brand; the plant has a current production of 20,000 bottles/hour, but can easily be adapted to double it, without changing the line layout or replacing the machines that are currently used.

The new production line has been designed and created according to the most innovative parameters of Industry 4.0 and smart factory, thanks to which it is capable of easily adapting to production flows required by market demand. The plant supplied by SMI, that includes an integrated system from the ECOBLOC® ERGON series, a case packer from the LWP 30 ERGON series and a shrink wrapper from the LSK 42 F ERGON series, allows Al Etihad Refreshment to efficiently and quickly meet these changes.

Since the beginning, the complete line has been designed to face an increase in production of up to 40,000 bottles/hour, without having to change the machines installed for the current production of 20,000 bottles/hour; indeed, to double it, it will be sufficient to add a new integrated system from the ECOBLOC® ERGON series.
The flexibility of SMI equipment also gives customers another option: he will be able to choose to maintain the current production speed of 20,000 bottles/hour and use the future integrated ECOBLOC® ERGON system to bottle another product or run new bottle formats.

Even in this case, no changes to the line are necessary, as the conveyors and automatic ERGON packers from the LSK and LWP series are so flexible that they will ensure the simultaneous management of several products and/or formats.

Automatic machines that adapt to consumers

One of the greatest challenges that is faced in the production of beverages is that of finding the correct balance between production and flexibility. Knowing for certain that consumers' requirements will change over the time, companies of the food & beverage industry need great operational flexibility from their production lines, so that they can modify production recipes and bottle and packaging formats. As flexibility has a cost, considering that meeting new demands means machine down times, it is fundamental to choose cutting-edge machines, like the ones supplied by SMI, that right from the start are designed to reduce down time and to be able to immediately adapt to new production requirements, thus improving the plant efficiency.

If you want to find out more information on the line solution installed by Al Ethiad Refreshment Factory and on the advantages offered by the machines supplied by SMI, we invite you to read the last issue of our SMI NOW magazine or to contact our sales department.

Marketing Department

SMI S.p.A.
E-mail: info@smigroup.it