Packaging and warehousing are some of the most cost intensive areas in a brewery – both in terms of capital investments and operating costs. ALECTIA has helped Scottish & Newcastle (today Heineken) on two important packaging projects in Finland and Portugal.

With ALECTIA’s expertise and experience from an endless list of projects, we ensure our clients best in class solutions for their packaging challenges. We do this by delivering sustainable, cost-effective solutions that ensure optimal commissioning, installation and performance – and ultimately: direct beneficial impact to the bottom-line.

A Finnish expansion
The Finnish brewery Hartwall was a part of the brewery group Scottish & Newcastle, which was acquired and split up between Carlsberg and Heineken. Due to its growing success, the brewery needed to expand and develop their production facilities.

Hartwall (which is today owned by Heineken) contacted ALECTIA to use their expertise in the form of a Master Planning process. The goal of the Master Plan was to outline how best to plan and develop the future required new capacity and capability of the brewery and the associated impact on CAPEX and OPEX.

The extensive project is now finished, and one of the benefits of the project is its long-lasting positive effect on Scottish & Newcastle’s activities in Finland: The Master Plan covers the development of the entire brewery over a time span of 10 years - enabling Scottish & Newcastle to stay a leading player in the European brewing industry for years to come.

Similar challenges in Portugal
Like many breweries in Europe, the Portuguese spring water filler, Sociedade da Água de Luso (SAL) has also experienced the need to expand, including establishing additional facilities for packaging on the back of a very successful launch of functional drinks. SAL is a leading producer of branded mineral and spring water in Portugal.

SAL contacted ALECTIA to assist SAL on a long list of assignments in reaching for the overall goal: to make room for additional facilities and growth in the Portuguese market. One of ALECTIA’s roles in the project was to provide basic engineering and to manage the tender process followed by the installation of a new packaging line. The packaging line works under aseptic filling conditions and has a medium speed capacity.

“Working with ALECTIA on those specific projects has been a learning curve. Giving them feed back on their performance has helped to align our requirements and expectations. Establishing a strong level of credibility was a key step for ALECTIA to be accepted at local level” says Olivier Goffin, Group Engineering Manager (former) in Scottish & Newcastle.

When working with finding the best solutions for packaging, ALECTIA always creates recommendations based on a thorough analysis of the client’s situation. In regard to the two projects, ALECTIA has played an important role in defining the challenges of the breweries and creating solutions that provide immediate and long-lasting value.