At the start of the Covid-19 crisis, Coca-Cola installed two new can filling lines using KHS technology.

At Wakefield Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP, they fill up to 10,000 cans and 1,800 PET bottles of soft drinks per minute – 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This amounts to 45% of the total volume CCEP produces in the UK

Biggest beverage factory in Europe

The factory has a total of eight filling lines; five of these process cans with volumes of 330 and 500 milliliters, the remaining three PET bottles holding 500 milliliters and 1.0 to 2.25 liters, producing around 300 stock keeping units or SKUs. The world’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottler cooperates with KHS as its technological partner: the Dortmund machine and systems manufacturer is responsible for four of the five can fillers and two turnkey canning lines.

The latter two lines 4 and 5 were installed and commissioned within one year during 2020. After Line 4 proved to be a success, the bottler then commissioned KHS to supply a second canning line. The heart of each line is the Innofill Can DVD can filler – here with a capacity of up to 120,000 cans per hour.

Installation during lockdown

Installation started a week after England had gone into total lockdown. In these difficult circumstances the project also proved a huge technical challenge. “Together with KHS we managed to install two lines within the space of just twelve months,” said Kerry Morgan-Smith, Wakefield operations manager.

“We’d never done this before – at least three to four years usually elapse between projects like these. We went from naught to sixty – and in the middle of the pandemic, too! It was a real stroke of luck to work with such a committed and outstanding team where every single member focused on our requirements as a customer.”