Heavenly water

The new issue of magazine 2/19 convinces with all kinds of interesting articles: for example a report about Yanbian Nongshim – a water factory. We don’t want to post any spoilers here, but nor did we want to keep what we saw all to ourselves either. A summary of the article can be found here, more about it in the magazine.

Gemstones are reflected in the panes of the display cases standing in a black chamber, with a glittering room-high diamond bottle suspended in its centre. That is the arresting sight welcoming visitors to Yanbian Nongshim’s water factory.

This impressive spectacle has an intriguing provenance, since the water bottled by Nongshim bubbles up from a spring on Mount Baekdu, a still-active volcano, through the middle of which runs the border between North Korea and China. And this mountain has quite a special meaning for the inhabitants of the Korean peninsula: “Legend tells us that our ancestor descended from the heavens right here and founded our people. So the mountain is sacred to us Koreans, and thus our water is, too,” relates Ahn Myung Sik, Chairman and CEO of Yanbian Nongshim. It was precisely because of this compelling heritage that the Korean parent company Nongshim decided in 2012 to build a new turnkey factory at just this spot in the north-east of China. The water flows by itself from Heaven Lake located in the volcano’s crater down to the spring about 40 kilometres away where it bubbles up from the ground – all of this without any artificial aid. It takes about 40 years to cover this distance in the natural way, during which time it flows through a series of rock layers that serve as filters. The water is transported by means of pumps only over the final three and a half kilometres or so from the spring to the production facility. However, it is not just the natural modalities of its extraction that make this water so special: “Our spring is located at an elevation of just under 2,300 feet, and maintains a constant temperature of six to seven degrees Celsius. What’s more, our water contains loads of minerals, chief among them silicates that are a prophylactic protection against dementia, for example,” says Ahn Myung Sik. “These are all reasons why our Baeksan natural mineral water is definitely something quite special.”

Three times ErgoBloc L

The entire company is suffused with this love for the product they are making, a special atmosphere that can also be felt by the numerous groups of visitors that flock to Mount Baekdu and on this occasion often stop over at Yanbian Nongshim as well. And to offer these groups a tour they will always remember, the firm has put its heart and soul into the presentation of its Baeksan water. On a route that’s one kilometre long, the visitors learn not only everything there is to know about the spring water, the rock formations and the company’s history (actually, the group concentrates mainly on foodstuffs, or to be more precise instant noodles), but are also given a crash course on PET materials and the bottling process. During this tour, visitors can repeatedly catch a glimpse of the production facility through large gallery windows.

The generously dimensioned halls accommodate three Krones lines equipped to the latest state of the art. They are almost identical in their layout, and an ErgoBloc L constitutes the heart in each case. One of its major advantages is its compact dimensions – though these played only a subordinate role at Yanbian Nongshim due to the generous amount of space available. The crucial consideration, rather, was the small number of operators required by the block-synchronised solutions. As Ahn Myung Sik explains, only four operators suffice for each line.

Would you, too, like to take a trip through the water factory of Yanbian Nongshim, and familiarise yourself with the kit installed there? Then I heartily recommend the following video or it is worth it to click here.