Red Bull ups the tempo in China

Red Bull is currently upsizing its canning capacities at its two Chinese production facilities.

In China, Red Bull has over 80% of the nation’s energy drink market - 230 million litres of Red Bull were sold in 2008 alone, for a turnover of approximately 430 million euros. And the firm is determined to maintain the momentum. Red Bull has accordingly channelled massive investment into its filling capacities over the past three years.

In 2005, Red Bull had reached the magic cumulative figure of one billion cans sold and the era of collaboration with Krones began. At its newly built Xian Ning facility in Hubei Province, Red Bull installed two Krones canning lines each rated at 36,000 cans an hour, which started operation in May 2006. Precisely two years later, in May 2008, a much faster line, rated at 72,000 cans an hour, started operation in the Beijing-Huairou plant. And this was followed in the summer of 2009 by the next two Krones lines, this time at the Xian Ning facility again. Thus, Red Bull is now operating a total of five Krones lines in China, producing 70% of its entire output, 3600 cans/min out of 5100 cans/min in all plants put together.

The Krones lines all have a similar layout. In the 72,000 cans/h line at the facility in Beijing-Huairou, a Pressant Uni can depalletiser unloads the cans onto a high-level discharge. They are then hot-filled by a Volumetic VOC-G with the flash-pasteurised product at a temperature of 85 °C, with a Ferrum seamer applying the lids. The filler is enclosed and in addition entirely walled in, accessible for the operator only via an airlock with a disinfection bath. This is followed by fill-level inspection using X-rays by a Checkmat FX. The filled cans are passed through a recooler, which was locally sourced by Krones and then packed by a Variopac Pro to form two times six-bottle shrink-packs, which are inserted two at a time into 24-bottle cartons by a downstream Wrapapac. The cartons are weighed to verify that the package weight is correct, ink jet date coded and then transported on two lanes to a MultiDivider, which creates the layer pattern for the Pressant Uni palletiser, which also operates with a high-level infeed.