Devilishly Successful

A VERY simple email inquiry requesting a quotation for a canning line rated at 50,000 cans per hour was the starting point for building the brand-new, imposing facility of Hell Energy Magyarország Kft., a family firm in Hungary.
Back i n 2004, inspired by the overwhelming successes of the world's market leader, a confectionery wholesaler called "Candy Globe" seriously considered marketing an energy drink. The sales structure for the confectionery was in place anyway, so the same channel could also be used for a beverage. Thereupon the family developed a recipe, chose a brand-name, created a design for the can, started to look for a contract bottler, found one in Poland, and then it was all systems go. By 2008, sales had soared to reach 60 million cans including exports to Poland and Romania.
In the energy drink markets of Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Kazakhstan, at least, the young brand "Hell' has overtaken the world's absolute market leader. The name, logo and design have all been well chosen. "Hell" promises fiery energy, the stylised demon's head in the logo wears a cheeky grin, and red and black are the dominant colours with the promise, "Gives you power like hell" marked on each can. With the market getting bigger, setting up an in-house production operation was an overwhelmingly obvious option.

Upsized and then downsized

Originally, the plan was for just one canning line, but then the owners looked a bit further into the future, and dimensioned the facility to accommodate a second line as well, this time for PET, to follow in the summer of 2012. The planning work was adversely affected by the international financial crisis in 2009, which also caused the Hungarian banks to drastically reduce the amount of loans they were granting. At times the entire project hung in the balance. So the project was downsized and self-financed. With this slimmed-down version, and an incipient recovery in the global economy, it then proved possible to give the green light after all.
Since May 2011, Hell has had a production facility of its own, featuring a hall for two lines. The first, already up and running, has a complete canning line from Krones plus the associated syrup kitchen. Rated at 48,000 cans per hour, it is one of the fastest in all of Hungary, and able to fill around one million cans a day in 24-hour operation, thus offering extra capacity for contract canning – a corporate capability that's already found takers.
Directly next to the actual canning hall, Krones installed a syrup kitchen, with a sugar intake system for Big Bags, already dimensioned for supplying two lines. In two sugar tanks, the sugar is dissolved continuously at 85°Celsius and adjusted to 65°Brix, after which it is filtered through two candle filters. In two component tanks, concentrate, taurine and citric acid are also dissolved. The components are then mixed with sugar in three syrup tanks; at any one time, one is mixing, one is being cleaned, and another is pumping the beverage to the Contiflow mixer, which has been installed right next to the filler. Here, the beverage is mixed with water in a ratio of 1 to 5, and carbonated. The syrup kitchen, in which the VarioClean CIP system also operates, offers sufficient extra space for the process technology of the planned PET line.

Compact line layout

The layout for the 48,000-cph canning line is unfussy and compact. Empty cans are fed in through a hole in the wall at a height of five metres from the can store, where they are depalletised by a Krones Pressant sweep-off machine featuring a high-level discharge and a layer pad removerRopa y zapatillas de running para mujer