The art of filling

The range of pasteurisers, sterilizers, bottle blow moulding units, aseptic and hygienic fillers is designed to be perfectly integrated with each other and your production process. All units can handle a wide variety of products and bottle shapes, to give you all the marketing possibilities you want.

At Stork we like to call this “the art of filling”. Lately we have developed our filling skills even further, with a new generation of aseptic fillers, the Asep-Tec?

Asep-Tec? flexible linear filler for total aseptic safety

The Stork Asep-Tec® is a unique linear aseptic filler. It stands out by the range of products and bottles (HDPE, PP, PET) it can handle, its high speed, its reliability, and its flexibility. It was designed from the ground up to provide carefully controlled and verifiable filling conditions and to meet the strict requirements of the validation-by-design concept. By identifying the factors which reduce the reliability and sterile conditions of conventional fillers we could avoid them in our new design, thus creating a new generation of fillers. Asep-Tec® units can handle high and low viscosity products and even products containing solids, so one filler can handle your full product range.

This is widely recognized and the Asep-Tec? became an instant success right from its introduction in the autumn of 2004.

Hero orders third Asep-Tec® filler

Hero in the Netherlands has scored a real hit with the successful Fruit2Day fruit-based drink.
Further to this success, the company recently ordered its third aseptic filler in two years from Stork Food & Dairy Systems. This unit will have an even higher capacity than the first two.

24,000 bottles per hour

About two years ago we supplied the very first commercial available Asep-Tec® filler to Hero, with a capacity of 12,000 bottles/hour. It was used for filling bottles with their new product Fruit2Day, a fruit juice with pieces of fruit in it. The product was an immediate success and in 2005 Stork supplied the second Asep-Tec®, this time with a capacity of 18,000 bottles/hour. The Fruit2Day success story is continuing and Hero has now ordered a third Asep-Tec® with a capacity of no fewer than 24,000 200-ml bottles per hour.

Versatility

Hero recently introduced ActiFruit, a fruit drink with a high fibre content. Hero decided to use their first Asep-Tec® for both Fruit2Day and ActiFruit. Although the bottles used for the products are of a different size and shape, the versatility of the machine means that it can handle both with only minor adjustments at the infeed.

Filling system

It’s quite difficult to handle this very special fruit which contains a large amount of cubes of fruit.
This challenge led to the development of a special valve and filling method for the Hero machines. These valves prevent splashes and spray and safeguard an excellent filling accuracy. Hero’s order for a the third Asep-Tec® filler clearly demonstrates that Stork was up to these challenges.

Asep-Tec® fillers for Poland and Spain

Stork Food & Dairy systems has also received orders for Asep-Tec® fillers from Leyma in Spain and the Maspex Wadowice Group in Poland.

Maspex will be using the Asep-Tec® for both cream and fruit juices. These products have quite different viscosities and both demand a lot of the filling systems. Juices will be filled into PET bottles of 200, 250 and 330 ml while cream will be filled into 250 ml PET bottles.

This filler will have a capacity of 18,000 250-ml bottles per hour.

The Asep-Tec® ordered by Leyma will also be handling two different products, which underlines the great flexibility of the design. In this application the two products have widely differing viscosities but can still be handled by the same filler valves. The filler will be handling both PET and HDPE bottles, ranging from 250 ml to 1.5 l. Both types of bottles will be closed with aluminium seals. Leyma’s Asep-Tec® unit will have a capacity of 18,000 1-l bottles per hour.

Asep-Tec®, designed to meet current and future requirements

Asep-Tec® fillers have a modular design. The modularity ensures that the filler meets not only your current, but also your future business needs. We have a range of retrofittable modules, each of which integrates fully with the main Asep-Tec® control system.

Aseptic neck trimmer

With this option, your Asep-Tec® filler can handle closed aseptically blown bottles. After external sterilization, the neck cutting unit trims the bottle and removes the scrap.

Nitrogen purge unit

Some sensitive products could be affected by oxygen during filling and subsequent storage. After sterilization, the nitrogen purge unit eliminates oxygen from the container. The container is then filled with the product and receives a final purge to eliminate oxygen from the headspace//bottle cap.

Aseptic screw cap unit

The standard aluminium cap seal unit of the Asep-Tec® can be replaced by a screw cap unit. This unit includes a cap sterilization station.

Tritec integration

Hero, Maspex and the Leyma orders are all based on Stork’s Integrated Tri-Tec concept where the Asep-Tec® filler is linked to a Sterideal UHT processor. At the end of the production line, the quality and shelf life of the products depend on effective packaging, processing and filling. Stork has incorporated these aspects in its Tri-Tec concept. Tri-Tec gives complete control and comprehensive production logs, so the user always knows what’s happening with their products. Tri-Tec is based on the experience gained by supplying over 1000 UHT processors, 200 blow moulding machines, 150 rotary weight fillers, 60 linear aseptic and semi-aseptic fillers and hundreds of continuous sterilizers.

Stork Food & Dairy Systems is part of the international Stork Group with divisions spanning a range of advanced engineering disciplines and has a total workforce of 13.000