Minimising the risk to consumers’ health is paramount in beverage manufacturing. Adherence to HACCP principles is crucial to risk minimisation and Clean-In-Place (CIP) processes are one of the principal HACCP tools. However, CIP systems are also a major contributor to the cost of production. They are generally intensive, use large amounts of energy, water and chemicals and CIP cleans can significantly eat into valuable production time.
In recent years, there has been much innovation in CIP technology, including in the reduction of CIP cycle time, allowing manufacturers to cut costs without compromising conformance to regulatory safety standards.
However, there doesn’t seem to have been much focus on reducing the CIP frequency, i.e. extending the interval between running CIP processes, thereby increasing the percentage of available production time in any given period. This is understandable because plant operators have not had a method of providing an evidentiary basis for deciding when it is necessary to run a CIP process, and therefore must take a very conservative approach to timing the operation of CIP cleans.
That situation has changed because of recent work done by Mr Wolfgang Vogl, inventor of the Coliminder® and founder of Vienna Water Monitoring Solutions (VWMS). Working with one of Europe’s largest bottled water producers, Wolfgang has shown that by using a Coliminder® to track the actual bacterial load in the water ‘in-process’, operators can determine when a CIP is actually needed, allowing the time between CIPs to be increased by 20% or more, leading to a massive reduction in CIP costs, and reduced likelihood of batches being rejected because of bacterial contamination.
To learn more about how the VWMS Coliminder® can help save costs in your beverage production plants, please contact us at info@optimosgroup.com
