South Africa Brewery – ABInBev Group (SAB) has become the first company worldwide to adopt Ritrama’s Core Linerless Solutions to label its beer bottles.
Core Linerless Solutions (CLS) is a technological platform – developed in collaboration with Omet, Spilker and Ilti – capable of transforming waste liner into a resource.
CLS was created with the aim of combining sustainability and cost reduction, knowing that reducing process waste is one of the greatest economic and industrial challenges. The products of the series represent a real revolution in the sector. They eliminate the problem of the liner disposal (which even becomes a lamination of the label) once and for all. Reel changes are also reduced thanks to a greater number of labels per roll.
Flying Fish flavoured beer is the first product on the SAB market to “wear” linerless labels. The project started in 2017 and entered a pilot phase in the fourth quarter of 2018. Large-scale production started in April 2019. A period of commercial testing was then completed. At the end of the testing and control phase on the Flying Fish beer labelling line, the Core Linerless Solutions® technology will be extended to the entire SAB product portfolio, allowing the Group’s environmental impact to be reduced by 57 tonnes of waste per year, in South Africa alone.
The adoption of linerless labels has made it necessary for SAB to update its production line. The new ILTI linerless dispenser allows the application of 36,000 labels per hour and, thanks to the reduced thickness of the material, each reel contains twice as many labels. This results in fewer reel changes during the production process as well as in a significant reduction in the volumes transported and handled.
Sergio Veneziani, product manager Ritrama’s Core Linerless Solutions product manager claimed: “The project with SAB was an exciting team effort that marked an important development in industry innovation, giving Ritrama the opportunity to assert its capabilities worldwide. We look forward to further extending this technology to the benefit of the environment and society.”