On March 20th, Sidel celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Beijing plant via a ceremony involving long-term partners, industry associations and customers. The day before, the local employees had themselves the opportunity to enjoy a plant tour and an anniversary lunch, attended also by Sidel’s President & CEO, Sam Strömerstén.
It has been nearly thirty years since the first Sidel office opened in China. Ten years ago, the company’s Beijing plant, which occupies a floor area of 40,000 square meters within the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Area, celebrated its inauguration when its first piece of equipment moved into operation. Today, the site has become an important international base of operations for Sidel due to its strong manufacturing capabilities, underpinned by global expertise and close proximity to local players in the beverage, food, home and personal care businesses.
Sam Strömerstén, President & CEO of Sidel, highlights, “Our Beijing site was the largest industrial investment ever made by Sidel, the only factory we have that is able to manufacture such a wide variety of packaging equipment. Nearly 4,000 installations in the country, the professional technical trainings offered in our 1,200 square meters Technical Training Centre and our continuous focus on quality, based on a LEAN manufacturing approach and driving our industrial footprint globally, are clear proofs of our commitment to the Chinese market.”
Sidel’s centre of expertise in Beijing includes end-to-end packaging solutions from bottle design to end-of-line. From Combis for carbonated soft drinks (CSD), water and hot-filled products, up to conveyors, packers and palletising equipment, the portfolio handled locally can easily satisfy the most demanding clients, helping them to build, maintain and improve the performance of their installations.
“With nearly 400 Sidel complete line solutions in the region we have extensive and rich experiences in building customer successes”, notes Scarlet Chen, Vice President Beverages Equipment Sales & Services Greater China. “Our expert team in Beijing – closely partnering with our Packaging scientists based in Shanghai – ensures a 360° service to our clients, during the pre-/in- and post execution phases. This is particularly important regarding aseptic applications, which are increasingly gaining the favour of our customer base”, she adds.
Over the past ten years, Sidel has implemented more than 100 aseptic PET complete lines in Greater China. Taking into consideration that liquid dairy and plant-based drinks are more and more winning consumers’ preference in the region[1], and they are increasingly bottled in PET to offer a premium proposition, this figure can only grow. This is why the company decided to enrich the plant in Beijing with an aseptic laboratory. Including a testing room as well as a cleaning and sterilisation room, the new lab is mainly used for validation tests of Beijing-made aseptic and ultra clean equipment: with 56 sets of advanced equipment, the team can run preform and cap decontamination tests, hydrogen peroxide residual tests within the packaging, plus microorganism isolation and purification. The aseptic lab also offers customers strong training support, in addition to trouble shooting potential product-related issues.
Scarlet Chen concludes, “With more than 1,000 installed references for sensitive products worldwide, over 40 years of aseptic expertise and nearly 100 joint complete line projects with Tetra Pak Processing Systems, local players active in the food and beverage markets can leverage our clear leadership in this segment.”
