Yili

The challenge

The world’s largest liquid dairy producer, Yili strives to provide Chinese consumers with high-quality, nutritional, healthy, and innovative dairy products. Its continuously growing sales demonstrate how, with the help of premium dairies, it successfully manages to differentiate its brand. As a strong believer in the potential of PET as a packaging material, Yili decided to partially switch its production from carton to PET bottles with the aim of introducing innovative packaging. Planning to diversify its portfolio with more value-added products to create and maintain a sustainable business, Yili required a versatile production line to vary the recipes of its products.

The solution

The team at Yili was particularly impressed by the technical support given by Sidel in new product development, as well as in the variety of testing methods implemented to qualify the PET barrier solutions. Yili acquired two aseptic PET complete lines, each including Sidel and Tetra Pak Processing Systems equipment. Every component was thus centred around one supplier, from process solution to PET packaging assessment, and from equipment definition and delivery to fast ramp-up. The lines, featuring a high-speed production capability to answer the growing Chinese market demand of liquid dairy products for ready-to-drink (RTD) consumption, also offer Yili the opportunity to move from the traditional wet bottle decontamination technology it was previously using to the Sidel aseptic blow-fill-cap solution, equipped with dry preform and cap sterilisation technologies. For the top liquid dairy producer, this was another decisive factor in choosing Sidel.

The outcome

Traditional aseptic solutions use peracetic acid, which requires rinsing the bottles with chemicals or hot water. The Sidel Aseptic Combi Predis sterilises the preform by injecting hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) vapour into the preform just before the preform heating stage in the oven. This allowed Yili to reduce waste and resources while benefitting from a competitive and cost-efficient solution. In addition, it provides high levels of efficiency and bottle lightweighting potential, as the bottles do not have the thermal constraints associated with the traditional bottle-rinsing process. Finally, the Sidel Aseptic Combi Predis, integrated as part of Yili’s complete lines, is equipped with specific dosing valves with wider diameter and a low-high speed regulation to be prepared for the future market requirements.