Beverage Processing Plant & Machinery Solutions

Green coffee bean, cocoa bean and made tea are cleaned of stones, dust and tramp metal. Tea is graded by leaf size and colour-sorted so that stalk and off-colour leaf are taken out before blending.

Coffee bean is roasted, cooled and ground to coffee powder. Cocoa bean is roasted, cooled and winnowed free of shell; the nib is ground to cocoa mass, and cocoa powder is milled from the press cake left after the butter has been pressed out. Tea leaf is not roasted and goes straight from sorting to blending.

Coffee powder, tea leaf and cocoa powder are blended to the recipe and sifted, then filled into tea bags, pouches or jars and coded.

Fruit is washed, sorted for soundness and size, and stemmed, peeled or de-seeded as the fruit requires before it is cut.

Prepared fruit is crushed and the juice or pulp is screened away from skin, fibre and seed. Pulp for nectar and pulpy drinks is passed through a finer screen so that coarse fibre is reduced.

Juice or pulp is blended with sugar syrup and water in tank where the recipe calls for it, homogenised, and pasteurised before filling.

Hot-filled bottles are capped and cooled through a tunnel; cups and pouches are filled and sealed on their own lines, then coded and cased.

Sugar is dissolved in treated water with heating, the syrup is filtered and cooled, and flavour, acid and colour are added to make the finished syrup.

Finished syrup is dosed into chilled treated water at the recipe ratio and carbon dioxide is dissolved into the chilled blend before it goes to the filler. Still drinks and non-carbonated energy drinks skip the carbonation stage.

Bottles and cans are rinsed, filled under counter-pressure so that the gas stays in solution, and then capped or seamed.

Filled containers are checked for leaks and fill level, coded and labelled, shrink-wrapped into packs and palletised for despatch.

Treated water is held in a closed tank and piped to the filler; the water treatment plant sits ahead of the packing line. Empty bottles and jars are conveyed to the rinser and rinsed before filling.

Bottles are filled and capped on one line; cups and pouches are filled and sealed on another; large returnable jars are filled and capped on a jar line.

Each container is date coded, labelled and checked for leaks and correct fill before it leaves the line.

Bottles are collated into shrink packs, stacked on pallets and stretch-wrapped for storage and despatch.

Milk powder, sugar, creamer, tea or coffee powder, cocoa and flavour are received in bags, tipped through a dump station, sifted and passed over magnets to catch tramp metal.

Each ingredient is weighed to the recipe and blended to a dry mix. Sugar may be milled finer first so that it does not separate from the lighter powders in the pack.

Where the premix has to disperse in hot water without lumps, the blend is moistened and dried into porous granules in a fluidised bed, with fines drawn off the air stream and returned to the bed.

The finished premix is auger filled by weight into sachets, sticks, pouches or jars, nitrogen flushed where the recipe calls for it, then coded, weight checked and cased.