Sidel and Tetra Pak have teamed up to develop the new manufacturing line at Bickford’s $20 million production facility in South Australia, helping expand the beverage producer into dairy. By Doris Prodanovic.
When Australian cordial and beverage producer Bickford’s opened its new $20 million bottling line, prime minister Scott Morrison and South Australian premier Steven Marshall toured the facility to see the latest in Australian manufacturing.
The new line installed at Bickford’s was developed by Sidel in conjunction with Tetra Pak, and is one of only a handful in the southern hemisphere to use aseptic filling technology.
Bickford’s senior brand manager Beverley Reeves told Food & Drink Business that when looking to upgrade the facility, the company had a vision for the future and found Sidel and Tetra Pak were the right partners to achieve this.
“They helped us design the equipment custom to us and gave us a world class facility,” says Reeves.
“The technology has two filling blocks that process liquids differently, one of which is an aseptic filling head enabling preservative free, ambient stable products.
“This makes it unique to us because most machines have a single process, single-head filler. We wanted to make sure everything we wanted to make was possible, so now we have a 28mm and 38mm sizes processed differently but packed on the same backend equipment of the line.
