Krones has inaugurated a €2.6 million research brewery at its facility in Freising, Germany, as it aims to carry out beverage production trials.
Called the Steinecker Brew Center, the facility provides both clients and Krones itself with an option for collaborative brewing, conducting trials, and testing new technologies.
The heart of the new brewing pilot plant is a five-hectolitre brewhouse comprising five different vessels.
Konrad Müller-Auffermann of Krones said: “The system is small, that’s true, but it offers maximum flexibility all the same: here we can combine different technologies, and are able to demonstrate the large bandwidth of solutions offered by Krones.
“We can, for example, reproduce an ultra-wide range of internationally employed processes on the one hand while also familiarising our own commissioning engineers and clients’ staff with the technologies concerned on the other.”
Krones, which has collaborated with its subsidiary Syskron for the site, said the centre will allow it to run practical trials to find out which process engineering solutions are most efficiently suited to beverage production and how digital interfacing can assist the brewer in his daily work.
It added that, thanks to the Brew Center, it will in future “be possible to develop new products faster and test them under realistic conditions”.
Heiko Feuring, who heads the Steinecker plant and the breweries business line, emphasised the swift progress of the project: “We were able to translate this investment project worth €2.6 million into hands-on reality within one year. So we’re delighted that we’re now able to use our Brew Center.”
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