GEA Group AG, as key project partner, has provided innocent, one of Europe’s leading smoothie and juice brands, with the process technology for the world’s first carbon-neutral juice factory. The new factory in the Netherlands will lead the way for future plants in the food industry with a truly sustainable approach. Located at the Rotterdam Food Hub, the production facility is scheduled to open officially in spring 2022.

In the new-build project, GEA is responsible for the process, refrigeration and heating technology. Early involvement in the design planning phase enabled the company to develop numerous innovative process changes that significantly help innocent on the path to reaching its climate goals.

“The innocent project is an outstanding example of how we put our purpose of ‘engineering for a better world’ into practice,” said GEA CEO Stefan Klebert. “Not only have we integrated the most resource-efficient technologies, we have also entirely rethought the processes as well as the heating and refrigeration systems. Together with innocent, we have pushed the envelope beyond standard beverage production practice.”

Energy supply and demand cycle

Since much of the energy used in production is for heat, GEA worked intensively on in-process energy and resource efficiency. The company also applied the sustainable energy solutions (SEnS) approach. This factors heating and cooling requirements into the systems right at the planning stage, instead of after the fact when corrections are virtually no longer possible. For instance, a GEA heat pump will recover waste heat from the refrigeration systems and reuse it in other process steps. GEA and innocent recently won gold in the European Heat Pump Association (EHPA) People’s Choice Award for this smart heat pump design.

Showcase for the entire beverage industry

Taking a 360-degree view of the process chain will allow innocent to substantially cut its carbon footprint while massively influencing other parameters such as water consumption and waste generation.

“I take my hat off to GEA because they have been at our side every step of the way, helping us challenge conventional design approaches. All the little details add up to a great success,” said Andy Joynson, Chief Blender (Site Director) at the new innocent plant. The new solutions implemented go far beyond conventional beverage production processes. “Food and beverage manufacturers can choose to base their future plant designs on our model. We want to inspire and support a broad-based transformation. In line with that, we are consciously inviting the industry to share in our findings—and at the same time to learn from our missteps and our successes.”

innocent, manufacturer of healthy drinks, opens its own factory, the blender, for the first time since it was founded in 1999. After a trial period, the first juices and smoothies roll off the conveyor belt last week. The production has a total capacity of up to 300 million litres per year for the whole of Europe.

innocent was the first customer to choose Rotterdam Food Hub as its location, because its products and ingredients have to travel much shorter distances here, reducing its logistics chain by 20 %. The blender is a completely carbon neutral electric drinks factory, in which everything revolves around sustainability. The brand new factory will create 200 new jobs for Rotterdam and the surrounding area.

The blender: carbon neutral and sustainable

One of the ways in which innocent achieves its sustainability ambition is by generating energy from wind turbines and solar panels. The heat from the factory is also reused. The blender is not only carbon neutral, but also sustainable because it uses significantly less water and produces less waste. As part of the cooperation between the 500 B Corps that share the same sustainable ambition, a commitment was made in 2019 to be fully carbon neutral by 2030, 20 years earlier than agreed in the Paris Climate Agreement.

However, innocent harbours the ambition to achieve carbon neutral operations by 2025 through compensation projects. In order to operate completely carbon neutral, innocent has entered into a partnership with Rotterdam-based Zero Emission Transport Company BREYTNER and joint venture partner HN Post & Zonen. They supply a complete fleet of electric 50-tonne trucks for transporting the orange juice by tank. With this step, innocent lays the foundation for completely zero-emission transport in the future. In addition, the smoothie and juice producer hopes to inspire other companies to adopt sustainable, emission-free transport.

innocent opts for the Port of Rotterdam

The Port of Rotterdam was the best choice for innocent, as it ensures that the distances for delivery of raw materials and distribution of the smoothies and juices are much shorter than elsewhere. “innocent’s supply chain largely comes together in Rotterdam; the juice and other ingredients arrive in containers at the Port of Rotterdam.

“The construction of our own factory in Rotterdam Food Hub will shorten innocent’s supply chain by 20%. It doesn’t stop there. From the drawing board to production, the blender was designed with sustainability in mind. This holistic approach and use of the latest technology makes Blender a factory that is better for people, planet and business.” says Andy Joynson, site director innocent.

Emile Hoogsteden, Commercial Director, Port of Rotterdam Authority: “We are proud to welcome innocent as the first customer of the Rotterdam Food Hub. The arrival of the sustainable blender factory is a great fit with the Food Hub’s concept of accommodating various fresh and frozen food flows. In addition, innocent’s sustainability ambitions are perfectly in line with those of the Port of Rotterdam.”

Rotterdam Food Hub

With the realisation of the Rotterdam Food Hub, the Port of Rotterdam Authority aims to further expand its position as the largest West European transit port for products in the agriculture and horticulture sectors. The business park, located on the Calandkanaal at the entrance to the Maasvlakte, occupies about 60 hectares and has been specially designed to optimally facilitate companies in the agrifood sector.

The agrifood sector involves handling perishable goods and speed is crucial. This is why the Food Hub occupies a central location. The large deep-sea container terminals are just a stone’s throw away, as are Cool Port and the cold storage warehouses on the Maasvlakte and in Eemhaven. The proximity of Greenports such as Barendrecht, Ridderkerk and Westland also make this an ideal location. Another advantage is that various facilities can be shared at the Rotterdam Food Hub site. It means that quays and facilities related to transport, storage, access control and customs, among others, can be shared efficiently.

More than half of the Rotterdam Food Hub site has now been released to customers. More companies will follow in the coming years.

Growth market

Agrifood is a growth market due to the increasing population and the rise in prosperity, especially in emerging economies. After the United States, the Netherlands is the world’s largest agricultural exporter. In 2020, trade amounted to almost €96 billion. It has helped make the Port of Rotterdam the market leader in Western Europe with 19 million tonnes of transshipments per year. The creation of the Rotterdam Food Hub responds to the increasing need of businesses in the agrifood segment for locations offering possibilities for short chains.

Following long years of contract-bottling, the smoothie and juice producer innocent has decided to build the very first bottling plant of its own. Krones won the order for four complete PET bottling lines and the corresponding IT landscape. The paramount consideration for “the blender”, as innocent has christened its greenfield project, was sustainability: the aim is to build an entirely CO₂-neutral factory. “But we’re also keen to reduce water consumption to a minimum, since we want to treat and re-use as much of it as possible,” explains Sam Woollett, Engineering and Facilities Lead. Each of the four identical PET lines handles up to 32,000 containers an hour. The new plant has been tasked with filling about 400 million bottles of chilled drinks a year. In all, innocent has invested approximately 250 million US-dollars in this project.

Four complete PET bottling lines from Krones

The Contipure AseptBloc DA blow-moulder/filler block consists of a Contiform 3 Pro stretch blow-moulding machine and a Modulfill Asept aseptic filler. For the Contipure D preform sterilisation module, innocent naturally enough opted for a particularly sustainable version. This ensures a reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), thanks to lower consumption of hydrogen peroxide, steam and energy, plus shorter preparation times. All containers after being filled are fitted with a tamper-evident seal and – depending on the format involved – dressed in a wrap-around or pressure-sensitive label. What’s more, the modularised Topmodul labeller is block-synchronised directly with the Variopac Pro FS packer.

Syskron is digitalising all the factory’s processes

As the group’s digitalisation specialist, the Krones subsidiary Syskron has developed a turnkey MES concept for innocent that through appropriate interfaces also integrates the ERP system, the process control and warehouse management systems in the new plant. This concept includes various solutions from the SitePilot IT family brand, not least the Planning production planning system, the Line Management order and administration system, plus Line Diagnostics for production data acquisition and analysis. From the category of Share2Act services, innocent will in future be using Connect: this enables all information, such as shift schedules, to be made available to all staff in digital form.

Chief Blender Andy Joynson explained that innocent is “aiming to build the earth’s favourite little healthy drinks factory, the blender. It’s location in the Port of Rotterdam is no accident: We will minimise the distance between the place where the fruits arrive from overseas and the actual production facility. This enables us to reduce the company’s CO₂ footprint by about ten per cent. We are delighted that we will be able to bottle our healthy drinks in our own plant, but more pleased that we will ensure that the production operation and the buildings comply with our sustainable standards.”