A first for a family dairy

In a first for the French dairy market, a mid-sized firm invests in a complete line to package UHT milk in PET

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FOR the first time a French dairy, Laiterie de Saint Denis de l'Hôtel (LSDH), has begun filling UHT milk in PET bottles. The line also produces and fills a huge multiplicity of fruit juices and various other drinks as dealer's brands. Located in the vicinity of Orléans, LSDH remains family owned it was founded in 1948 by Roger Vasseneix, the current owners' grandfather, as a small rural dairy processing 6,000 litres of milk a day. Twenty years later, ten times this quantity was running through the firm's pipes, and even back then, sterilised milk in plastic bottles was amongst the goods offered by the company. Milk cartons were added to the portfolio in 1973, and six years later, the firm took over the Varennes Dairy. When the European Community introduced the milk-quota system at the end of the 1980s, LSDH created a second earner with aseptic carton-filling contracts for large conglomerates and retailing chains that turned out to be a lucrative masterstroke, so that in 1990 the company had to build a new plant outside the town centre of Saint Denis de l'Hôtel. In the late 1990s, LSDH yet again expanded its production portfolio by adding an aseptic filling operation for functional drinks, with up to 100 different ingredients. At the beginning of 2008, LSDH integrated a third plant into its corporate matrix, the juice company JFA in Alsace, whose production capacities are comparable to those of LSDH. Today the firm is lead by the third generation of the Vasseneix family: Emmanuel as president, brother Christophe looking after the plants, whilst sister Christel Rubineau is in charge of human resources. All in all, LSDH now makes around 900 million packages a year at its three facilities, where the latest acquisition PETAsept L line from Krones provides maximised product flexibility for milk and sensitive beverages. In addition, Krones also supplied the entire process-engineering kit, making the milk bottling process into an integrated, fully coordinated whole. LSDH produces and fills about 900,000 containers per week on this line, run in three-shift operations From cartons to PET Up till 2006, LSDH had largely been concentrating on aseptic cartoning. With ten cartoning machines and eight lines, the plant in Saint Denis de l'Hôtel produced around 800,000 Brik packages a day. But both the market and the demand patterns are in constant flux, which was why the company decided to incorporate aseptic PET bottling into its range whilst simultaneously investing in two lines. One inline bottling operation with an hourly output of 18,000 containers without its own blow-moulder makes 100ml up to 250ml portion packs dressed in sleeve labels and holding soy milk, smoothies, functional drinks and cream. For the large volumes, LSDH placed an order with Krones for installing a complete line rated at 18,000 bph in rotary design and with its own blow-moulder to make the bottles. Another aspect differentiating/ distinguishing it from its inline counterpart is the huge multiplicity of bottles and products handled: currently about 30 varieties, and the many different options for end-of-the-line packaging. Krones' process-engineering project comprises the entire system for the preparation and UHT sterilisation of milk, milk-based mixed drinks, juices and soymilk, which supplies the 18,000-bph PETAsept L line, producing high and low-acid beverages with pH values ranging from 3.8 to 8.0. The products on this line can make include 100- per-cent fruit and vegetable juices, squashes, semi-skimmed milk and skimmed milk as white or aromatised milk, plus soymilk. The entire line has been designed to minimise both product losses and eneGirls Air Jordan 1