Tetra Pak, Rockwell Automation collaborate for powder manufacturers

The collaboration — starting with evaporation and spray drying — has resulted in Tetra Pak’s new Powder Plant Booster solution, to be packaged with Rockwell Automation’s Model Predictive Control (MPC) and its Pavilion8 and PlantPAx MPC technology.

The combination of Tetra Pak’s food application expertise and the leading digital technology of Rockwell Automation1 will help producers to adapt to fluctuating demand-driven manufacturing far more quickly and more cost effectively.

Pavilion8 driven applications have been shown by Rockwell Automation to deliver possible product quality variability reductions of up to 60%, reductions in off-spec products by up to 75%, improved throughputs up to 9%, and reductions in energy per unit of product up to 9%2. This allows producers to fully optimise their operations — helping them stay competitive while meeting changing market demands.

Fred Griemsmann, vice-president, cheese and powder systems at Tetra Pak, said, “The food and drink industry now requires that producers have a level of agility never seen before. This means we must be ready to offer our customers advanced processing control technology that is both flexible and precise. Customers can leverage our food application expertise, have access to production data in real time and adapt their process variables to match requirements — without any loss in quality, productivity, or throughput. This unique collaboration with Rockwell Automation provides the foundation upon which this capability is based.”

Matthew Fordenwalt, VP GM, systems and solutions, Rockwell Automation, said, “Rockwell Automation is delighted to build upon a relationship that spans 35 years and collaborate with Tetra Pak, a company that shares our view that deeply understanding customers and their best opportunities for productivity creates value. We believe shared customers insights, coupled with technology and domain expertise, will deliver real value focused outcomes to the industry.”

This business collaboration showcases how a combination of expertise can help customers achieve important business-critical goals, even on a global scale. Tetra Pak can now offer its evaporation and spray drying customers proven Advanced Process Control and Model Predictive Control solutions. that have demonstrated success all around the world.

The Powder Plant Booster solution — with complementary Pavilion8 software — is a process modelling, advanced control and optimisation platform that integrates with any control system to continuously provide real-time insight, diagnostics, and advanced control. It achieves this by delivering an intelligence layer on top of basic automation systems, which, due to its built-in performance metrics, continuously drives plants towards addressing multiple business objectives.