StrongPack Ltd. 2019

The challenge

The objective of the company was to become the number one, high-quality, non-alcoholic contract packaging company in Africa. The carbonated soft drinks market was constantly growing but distribution was complicated by long transportation routes and difficult road conditions, creating a large demand for bottled drinks with longer shelf life. StrongPack needed to differentiate itself and its capabilities from the existing players in the market. It decided to invest in state-of-the-art technology for PET and can production, thereby expanding the range of packaging options it could offer its customers.

The solution

StrongPack first started discussions with Sidel when it entered the beverage bottling business, targeting a greenfield project with two complete lines, one for cans and the other one handling PET bottles. These lines started running in 2018 and were mainly dedicated to packaging RC Cola, one of the world’s leading cola brands. Their performance and reliability perfectly matched the co-packer’s expectations, so StrongPack invested in another two complete PET lines, one standard PET and one integrating Sidel’s Actis in Combi configuration.

The outcome

The overall production capacity of the Agbara plant currently lies at a remarkable 850 million PET bottles per year, including both standard and coated bottles. The two regular PET packaging lines are running at 36,800 bottles per hour (bph) and 46,000 bph. In addition, the versatile canning line produces 40,000 cans per hour. Here, the entire line layout and concept has been developed to support the production of non-alcoholic malt drink, a popular beverage in Nigeria. By choosing Sidel’s Actis, StrongPack lightweighted the bottles by 25% while redesigning their shapes.

"“We were looking for a solution that would help us overcome some of these challenges. After careful consideration, we found that Sidel and its Actis system – as integrated in a Combi configuration in one of our complete PET lines – was what would fit the local value chain conditions best.”"

Del Tupaz

Managing Director at StrongPack

Willowton Group in South Africa has increased its production volumes and revolutionised its sunflower oil brand, Sunfoil, thanks to Sidel’s expertise in PET blowing and packaging design.

Carola, one of the largest producers of mineral water in France, has produced a new, light PET bottle and increased output speed by 3,000 containers per hour – thanks to Sidel.