Kieselguhr-free Filtration convinces Australia and New Zealand
Since 2009, Australia’s and New Zealand’s famous brewery group Lion Nathan has been running a total of five PROFI® separator / membrane filter installations for beer filtration. During the same time, Lion Nathan has completed a changeover to green beer clarification in all of their eight plants, exclusively using centrifuges from the GEA Westfalia Separator Group. Separator’s Digest® talked to John Meehan, Brewing Development Manager, about their experiences.
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The strategy is simple: Lion Nathan invests in its core assets – people, brands and production facilities. The firm has invested some $500 million in these assets over the past five years, to consistently improve and to remain innovate in the future. These investments include the automation of filtration.
Many advantages: better beer quality, increased cost-effectiveness, low water consumption
Global practice has demonstrated that the combined PROFI® separator / membrane filter process not only meets the primary development objective - namely the complete substitution of kieselguhr -it is also a more than attractive investment in other respects. The arguments range from beer quality, cost-effectiveness and dust-free operation, as well as low water consumption, a high degree of automation with a continuous method of automation as well as great flexibility.
In May 2009, Lion Nathan Australia installed two PROFI® systems with two 300hl/h lines.
“Bringing more sociability and well-being to the world.”
Until recently, the Lion Nathan Group was primarily involved in producing alcoholic beverages such as beer, cider, wine and spirits. The major interests of the company were based in Australia and New Zealand. In 2009, the Japanese Kirin Holdings Company Limited acquired 100 percent ownership of Lion Nathan. Lion Nathan was then merged with National Foods, owned by Kirin since 2007, to form Lion Nathan National Foods; now Australasia’s largest food and beverage company. Products now include also dairy products, cheeses and juices. The core vision is now “bringing more sociability and well-being to the world”. Lion Nathan Beer Group, as a business unit of Lion Nathan National Foods, runs five large commercial breweries and six microbreweries in Australia, and three commercial breweries in New Zealand. Total output of the beer branch is around 10 million hl.
Decision in favour of the most modern filtration system available on the market
In May 2009, Lion Nathan Australia installed two PROFI® systems, each with two 300hl/h lines, in the breweries Castlemaine in Brisbane and Tooheys in Sydney; in New Zealand, one PROFI® system with one line was installed in the Pride Brewery in Auckland in October 2009. At the Brisbane plant, two candle filters and a horizontal filter were previously operating; at the Tooheys plant, two vertical kieselguhr filters; and in New Zealand, a kieselguhr candle filter. The Castlemaine and Tooheys filters were at the end of their working life and the complete brewing sections were upgraded. “We wanted to automate the complete filtration section. And the lack of kieselguhr was obviously a big positive decision”, says John Meehan, Brewing Development Manager. In New Zealand, however, the Pride Brewery was a completely new brewery. “Here we decided to use the most modern filtration system available on the market”, Meehan tells.
Meehan: “We decided to use the most modern filtration system available on the market”
Return-on-investment-goals have been met
Meehan outlines the experiences with PROFI®: “Beer quality is certainly supported by the PROFI® system. It removes nearly all of the culture yeast from the beer. And also there is no risk of kieselguhr or large particles bleeding into the final beer. There is no negative impact on the quality at all. Concerning cost-effectiveness, the returnable goals have been met. Water consumption is definitely reduced. The performance guarantee was 0.05hl of process water per hl of beer, which is quite ambitious. The consumption of the deaerated, carbonated chilled water was guaranteed at 0.01 per hl beer. After hot cleaning, water is used to cool the membranes down. In Brisbane, these performance guarantees have not been met because the process water is too warm, and more water is used for cooling the membranes. The process water we use for cleaning is recycled water that is up to 30 degrees Celsius. Normally you would use mains water for that with around 15 to 20 degrees Celsius. Overall we were able to reduce the water consumption in the Castlemaine Brewery from 3.5hl water per hl beer to around 2hl of water. This is probably about world class. Mainly because we installed a recycling water plant, but the PROFI® system did help as well.”
Meehan: “Kieselguhr free operation is great”
“There is obviously less risk to the people because of the silica dust problems. You don’t need as much labour to manhandle kieselguhr and make it up. There is no leakage of kieselguhr into water recycling. We used to get kieselguhr sludge in the water recycling before and needed to remove it. You don’t need to buy kieselguhr and you don’t need anyone to make it up. So, good all-round!”
Meehan continues: “The flexibility in handling different beer types is excellent now. We automated the cellar at the same time. We can queue up maturation vessels and queue up bright beer vessels. We can do a beer / water / beer change quite quickly in 20 minutes now. That would have been impossible before; we needed at least 1 to 2 hours. The possibility of full automation enabled one technician to easily operate the two PROFI® lines in Castlemaine. It certainly reduces the amount of labour.”
He concludes: “Overall, concerning the return on investment, quality and operating capabilities the system has certainly performed. It’s always a decision case by case. When we install the next filter lines in coming years we will have to decide if to relocate an old system or put another PROFI® in.”
Separators also for green beer clarification
Lion Nathan also uses the advantages of separators for the green beer clarification, which takes place at an early stage of the process. The high cell count of yeast cells in the main fermentation is not desired in storage. Traditionally, green beer is clarified by sedimentation of the yeast and other turbid substances. The beer is then transferred with as little yeast and sediment as possible, as Lion Nathan generally does not use a secondary fermentation process. This can be achieved by using a separator. The yeast is fed into a collecting tank for repitching, or into a separate yeast blending tank used during the beer recovery process when the green beer is separated. Due to the modern desludging mechanism used in separators from GEA Westfalia Separator Group, the yeast is discharged in a very compact form. With this high DS content, the surplus yeast can more easily be sold. Parallel beer losses are also reduced.
Therefore, since last year, all Lion Nathan plants use GSC or SC separators from GEA Westfalia Separator Group for their green beer separation. Castlemaine in Brisbane has one older SC 120 and one new GSC 150; Tooheys in Sydney also uses two GSC 150s; the iconic Boag’s Brewery in Launceston, Tasmania, uses one GSC 150; South Australian Breweries, another GSC 150; and the Swan Brewery of Western Australia, a SC 150. In New Zealand there is one GSC 150 in operation at Lion Nathan in Auckland, and one GSC 70 in Christchurch. Lion Nathan began brewing at its new Auckland brewery, called “The Pride”, during the last quarter of 2009.
John Meehan says: “The green beer separators are performing pretty well. Because we have a process now, to blend the excess yeast into the green beer transfer, and so we remove any beer in the yeast and then concentrate the yeast up to sell as by-product. And that’s fantastic for us, because we reduced the recovered beer. Some plants don’t have any recovered beer anymore. That’s a real bonus, not to handle recovered beer. Another advantage of the green beer separation is that it reduces the traditional time of the maturation to settle out the yeast by days.”
As a business unit of Lion Nathan National Foods, the Lion Nathan beer group runs five major breweries and six microbreweries in Australia, as well as three large breweries in New Zealand.
“Maintenance in collaboration with GEA Westfalia Separator Group is very good.”
“For some breweries, this was a real new technology. For instance, at the Castlemaine brewery we started only in 2009 with green beer separation. Ok, when several separators are located at the same place, they need to be segregated from other areas because of the noise, but that works well for us. You have to assure that the maintenance is correct; otherwise you may have some oxygen pickup. But the maintenance in collaboration with GEA Westfalia Separator Group is very good. Now all of the breweries of Lion Nathan use exclusively centrifuges from GEA Westfalia Separator Group. People at the breweries are pretty satisfied with that situation.”
Lion Nathan´s strategy seems to work well
Last year, Lion Nathan´s power brand portfolio continued to grow its portfolio mix share. Premiumisation across the market, combined with successful innovation, helped to drive a strong revenue growth of eight per cent in the last quarter of 2009. Volume grew nearly three per cent, reflecting the resilience of the Australian beer market in all economic circumstances. The New Zealand market continued to be challenging as a consequence of difficult economic conditions. In the year leading up to December 2009, the total New Zealand alcohol market declined 3.3 per cent in terms of volume, while the beer market declined five per cent. Lion Nathan New Zealand continued to outperform the market with total volume stable overall, up by 0.4 per cent and with a revenue growth of 2.3 per cent in the December quarter.
Information about the author: John Meehan
Brewing Development Manager
Lion Nathan National Foods
Pictures: Lion Nathan