WBIA: Top manufacturing and ingredient innovations this year

In this year’s World Beverage Innovation Awards, held at Drinktec in Germany in September, there was no shortage of cutting-edge innovations in the best technology, manufacturing and ingredient categories.

The winner of best beverage ingredient was Syndeo – a range of natural and vegetal hydrocolloid blends from Alland & Robert.

Finalists in this category included Arla Foods Ingredient’s Crystal Clear Protein Water, which enables producers to create completely clear protein-enriched sports drinks, as well as Nexira’s two new organic solutions for food and beverage emulsions.

There was also a range of natural colours as part of Kancor’s Kancolor Citrine series, which deliver natural green colouring with ingredients picked on Kancor-approved alfalfa farms.

This year’s best manufacturing or processing innovation was judged to be Sidel’s SuperCombi – an all-in-one machine that integrates five separate process stations in a single piece of technology. FoodBev’s Darren Wood spoke with Sidel CEO Sam Strömerstén about the SuperCombi, which incorporates a preform feeder, blower, labeller, filler/capper and cap feeder.

Sealed Air’s DivoMask is a safe, shiny, non-sticky and non-slippery coating that effectively restores the lustre of scuffed RGBs, which was also named as a finalist in the best manufacturing or processing innovation category. It was joined by Intralox’s latest packaging innovation which allows manufacturers to transfer and manipulate packages as small as 4.3 inches by 4.3 inches in speeds of up to 500ppm.

Frigel’s EcoDry System is a new process-synchronised cooling system where each main process has a cooling unit specifically designed for the application, while Döhler made the shortlist for its range of unhopped wort concentrates specifically tailored to meet the needs of brewers both today and tomorrow.

The category was rounded off by Heez from Carel Industries – a new solution for the control and management of beverage coolers – as well as Ardagh’s sculptured embossing technology for food packaging that adds definition to glass containers like Duerr’s marmalade jars.

In best technology innovation, Mitte – the world’s first smart water system that unites water purification with enhancement, giving users personalised and healthy daily drinking water direct to their homes – emerged as victors.

The remaining three finalists underscored the extent of innovation within food and beverage technologies.

Frigel’s EcoDry System was shortlisted for a second time, while Dynafill from Krones – a new beverage filling system that dramatically increases the speed and lowers the CO₂ requirements of beverage companies – and WaveGrap’s Multipack solution, which is a more stable non-stretch PE film applied by being ‘rolled over’ the tops of cans to group them into a multi-pack, were also named as finalists.