Keen interest in electron-beam sterilisation

Electron beams are already a well-established and familiar technology in the food industry. What’s new is that Krones has now unveiled a solution for sterilising preforms using electron-beam technology.

At the prototype in Hall B6, Dr. Hans Scheuren from the development team is ready and waiting to tell the visitors to the fair all about this new method of sterilisation. “The trade public is very interested in how our sterilisation technology works. On the Asian market, in particular, electron-beam systems are already being quite widely used. And it’s precisely these clients who appear to be highly impressed by the very compact sizes we have achieved here.

Whereas other systems sterilise the complete bottles, we already treat the preforms themselves, which means we can downsize the dimensions involved quite significantly. The performance data, too, plus the shielding of cast-steel instead of lead, are cogent considerations that are being well received.

It is emerging that European bottlers had up to now had little or no experience of using electron treatment for preforms or containers, The Asian market, by contrast, is significantly further advanced in this regard.”

“There are several Japanese customers who’ve expressed keen interest in deploying this system for field-testing”, says a gratified Dr. Scheuren following the first few days of the fair.