Seven years ago, Heineken recalled about 17m bottles of its Netherlands-brewed Export beer because of contamination by glass particles. Compared with the disaster at Perrier three years earlier, when traces of benzene were found in the French mineral water, this was a minor incident.
But the Dutch company was determined to ensure there could be no repeat. Glass contamination is a sensitive subject in the brewing industry and potentially damaging for a brand or its owner. Tiny particles can get in at various stages of the cleaning, capping and filling process. Often, mishaps are spotted before any bottles can leave the brewery.
In the Heineken incident, the problem was traced to the glass supplier. Inspections were stepped up there, along with routine checks at Heineken, which sought ways to discover glass contamination automatically. It wanted to be able to detect at least 95 per cent of tiny particles - on lines running at 30,000-60,000 bottles an hour.
Berco Landman, Heineken's senior partner for packaging research and development, was asked to investigate potential solutions. "We could find nothing we could buy off the shelf to meet our needs," he says.
So Heineken turned to the UK's PA Consulting Group, which looked at such solutions as X-rays, gamma rays, nuclear magnetic resonance and ultrasonic techniques. These were either not good enough or too expensive, according to Tony Cronshaw, of PA's product and process engineering practice.
PA eventually developed a solution inspired by a method used in the pharmaceutical industry to inspect vials.
The beer bottle is spun at high speed to create a vortex of liquid and then inspected with a CCD (charge coupled device) camera. The uniqueness of the system is in the optics, says Dr Cronshaw - the camera's angle of view and the use of light from below the bottle. This gives a "dark field" effect with a very high contrast. A differential system cancels out the effect of any marking on the bottle itself.
After demonstrating the technique in the lab, PA worked with GEI International, a UK bottle-handling specialist, and Eagle Vision, image processing specialists, to build a larger concept machine. This includes a carousel system with cameras that "follow" a bottle as it is spun.
The first production prototype of the Filled Bottle Inspection system is due to go into service at Heineken's Zouterwoude brewery near Amsterdam soon. Heineken and PA have applied for or been granted patents on the system in several countries.
The Dutch company is also licensing it exclusively to GEI, for a negotiated period, so that a variety of applications in the beer and soft drinks industries can be developed.
"We should not keep such safety innovations to ourselves," says Dr Landman.
Dr Cronshaw says the development underlines the importance of using technology for "brand protection" - preventing manufacturing defects reaching the market and the potentially enormous costs associated with a recall and of a decline in market share.
PA Consulting: e-mail tony.cronshaw@pa-consulting.com
© Copyright Financial Times 2000
