BEST PRACTICE IN BOTTLING

When Zenith’s UK Soft Drinks Industry Conference delegates were kindly invited to visit Coca-Cola’s biggest soft drinks bottling operation in Europe at Wakefield earlier in April, I was greatly impressed by a range of best practice insights:

• It achieves day 2 delivery, meaning an order today can be on the road tomorrow.
• Part of its operations are so automated that it can run with the ‘lights out.’
• Water usage in 2010 was as low as 1.31 litres for every litre of finished product. The figure for 2011 is already down to 1.25 litres and the ultimate target is 1.1 litres.
• Together, the three canning lines fill 100 cans every second, 6,000 per minute and 360,000 per hour.
• Recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television for 3 hours.
• Recycling one PET bottle saves enough energy to run a 60 watt light bulb for 6 hours.

Most impressive of all were two other features – total commitment to sustainability including zero waste to landfill already achieved and total workforce ownership of efficiency and sustainability goals.