Map out the course before breaking ground: this is the guiding principle behind the KHS Group’s expansion of its advisory and planning expertise. KHS Innoplant combines specialized consultancy and engineering to create an integrated service that provides beverage producers with support long before they decide to invest – and way beyond the commissioning of their customized system.
KHS’ expanded service is aimed at both established and startup beverage industry bottlers launching greenfield projects in dynamic segments such as water, CSDs, juice or RTD products. Kai Acker, CEO of KHS, comments on the latest addition to the company portfolio: “With KHS Innoplant we come in early on in the strategic planning phase – for investing in a modern beverage plant starts long before you choose the first machine. This allows us to contribute our expertise more comprehensively and develop holistic systems and solutions together with our customers that are consistently tailored to their individual requirements."
It all starts with the business model
In a branch of industry where planning usually starts with a factory structure or individual line specifications, KHS Innoplant goes back one step further. “Before going into any planning detail, we first focus on which business model is to be realized with the new beverage plant and which market goals our customers wish to achieve,” says Heiko Bucher, Senior Lead Consultant at KHS. Bucher has over two decades of experience in the consultancy and design of complete turnkey lines for the international beverage industry. His profound expertise enables him to study the requirements of operators of new builds and expansion projects in great depth.
Whether there are insufficient in-house engineering capacities, media consumption is hard to calculate or full budget plans need to be drawn up for bank negotiations, KHS Innoplant takes everything into consideration with its 360° approach. Bucher’s team guides customers through the entire process in a structured and transparent manner. “Clients often have little more than a vision of entering a market or setting up a new location to start with. With our helicopter view, we always examine the big picture – way beyond the mere filling line,” Bucher explains. Besides the actual production technology itself, further important aspects such as building dimensions, traffic areas, intralogistics, energy supply and integration into regional infrastructure are thus also always included in design and layout planning.
