Lower energy costs plus reliable production: packaging shrink tunnels offer alternative sources of energy

Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, prices for electricity, gas and oil have rocketed. The situation on the world’s energy markets remains tense, with the high costs a huge financial burden for both consumers and industry.

There is an increasing demand for alternative solutions to secure an economical supply of energy in the long term. This is where KHS comes in with its package of shrink tunnel conversions. With it, the Dortmund, Germany, specialist for filling and packaging systems enables its clients to convert their existing machinery to several different forms of energy.

KHS experts like Bernd Pauls offer customers advice and information on the various conversion options and their specific benefits in its global Technical Talks webinar series, among other channels.

Over the last few months many concerned customers have contacted Bernd Pauls, KHS service sales support manager. “The big rise in energy prices is making the beverage industry very nervous,” he says.

“Our customers … are now looking for economical ways of ensuring the energy supply for their machine parks in the long term.” As an experienced service specialist, Pauls knows that there is no general formula here.

“Each bottler has different requirements and challenges. In close cooperation with our customers, we thus work to find specific remedies that are perfectly tailored to the current and future needs of the respective company.”

To this end, KHS has put together an extensive tool kit of conversion variants. Taking the shrink tunnel as an example, Pauls outlines the flexible options available. “Our customers can opt for conversion from one source of energy to another — from natural gas to electricity or liquid gas, for instance.

“They also have the option of switching the system between two types of gas or flexibly converting it to electricity. Conversion back to a gas supply can then be performed by the customer as required.” This significantly reduces dependence on a single source of energy and increases the security of supply.

With the help of gas and electricity cassettes, KHS customers can change the source of energy supplied to their shrink tunnel. They also have the option of switching the system between two types of gas or flexibly converting it to electricity.

The conversion variants greatly differ in their nature and complexity. “Some are carried out by our experts just once; others are conversions that provide reversible setup options,” Pauls explains.

Conversions are available for practically all existing shrink tunnels and are installed by KHS specialists specifically trained for the job. There is usually no change in machine control for the operating personnel. With the reversible option the setup is changed by the customer either digitally in a matter of minutes using a selector switch on the HMI or by changing a module over (this takes just a few hours).

“The customer’s engineers are of course thoroughly trained in module changeovers by our expert colleagues,” says Pauls.

In addition to providing technical support on site, KHS also delivers extensive advice regarding energy optimization of installed systems. This includes a number of energy-saving packages. On the shrink tunnel one of these is a standby option where on a production stop the temperature can be manually or automatically lowered by about 50°C.

When it comes to the use of resources, KHS has made great progress in the last few years. On its shrink packers, for example, not only can extremely thin film be processed but also film made of 100% recycled material. On request existing packaging machines can also have a paper wrapping unit permanently installed.

Live dialog with customers: Technical Talks

KHS offers its customers advice and information on the various conversion options and their specific benefits in its supplementary global Technical Talks webinar series.