Recently, the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Economy and Information Technology officially announced a "2023 Zhejiang Province Future Factory List", identifying 213 factory/workshop projects in Zhejiang Province as provincial future factories, smart factories, and digital workshops in 2023. Among them, Wencheng Wahaha Hongzhen Food Technology Co., Ltd. appeared in the list and was successfully awarded the "2023 Future Factory of Zhejiang Province".
Wencheng Wahaha Hongzhen Food Technology Co., Ltd. is the unit where Wahaha Wencheng Factory is located. This "factory in the mountains", which has attracted much attention since the start of construction two and a half years ago, has always been regarded as the latest thinking and exploration of Wahaha Group in the field of intelligent manufacturing.
The "factory of the future" in the mountains has driven the high-quality take-off of rural revitalization
Located in Bailuzhou Water Economic Industrial Park, Wencheng County, Wenzhou City, Wahaha Wencheng Future Factory is the fourth factory invested and built by Wahaha in 26 counties in the mountainous area of Zhejiang, and is also one of the 76 branches established by Wahaha in underdeveloped areas of the country in the past 37 years. With a total area of about 120 acres, Wencheng Base mainly produces innovative beverage products such as Wahaha AD calcium milk, eight-treasure porridge, high-calcium multi-vitamin milk drink, coconut milk, etc.
The person in charge of the Wahaha Wencheng project said: "Generally speaking, large enterprises build factories in underdeveloped areas, and the transfer may be backward production capacity. However, Wahaha built a factory to bring the most mature production line and the most advanced technology to 26 counties in the mountainous area of Zhejiang, to help the development of local industries through 'technical hematopoiesis', and to sow the seeds of scientific and technological take-off in the mountains. ”
It takes only 15 days from negotiation to signing, only 2 months from signing to land supply, only 11 working days from land supply to construction project planning permit, and only 7 months from the start of construction to the commissioning and production of the first production line...... Now it has been officially certified as a "factory of the future", and the construction of Wencheng factory is not only a vivid example of industrial co-prosperity in 26 counties in the mountainous area of Zhejiang, but also a "Wahaha speed" of intelligent manufacturing project construction.
At present, the Wencheng factory has completed several rounds of employment and recruitment, with nearly 200 employees, most of whom are locals of Wencheng County. Wahaha Wencheng Factory continues to "hematopoiesis" for the local area in terms of providing employment, raw material procurement, and logistics drive, and at the same time driving the development of related industries in the region, it has also taken the lead in laying a good example of intelligent transformation and upgrading of food and beverage.
Fresher and safer, aseptic cold irrigation ensures the core competitiveness of products
Generally speaking, the hot filling process of traditional beverage production lines needs to reach a filling temperature of more than 90°C to meet the sterilization needs of liquids. The high temperature sterilization time is long and the temperature is high, and some flavor substances in the beverage may be affected by the temperature during this process. The taste and aroma of beverage products filled at room temperature will be more self-heating, but there are higher requirements for the sterilization process.
Wahaha Wencheng factory has introduced the most advanced intelligent aseptic cold irrigation equipment, using dry hydrogen peroxide gas sterilization process, aseptic blowing technology, and aseptic microbial isolation system, which can achieve the level of log6 microbial control, which is the highest standard in the global industry. This also means that each bottle of "Wahaha" that comes off the production line from the Wencheng factory can retain the nutrients and flavor and taste to the greatest extent under the premise of ensuring the sterilization requirements of the product.
Taking Wahaha "Coffee" coffee as an example, the production process adopts "high-temperature spray drip filtration" and "instantaneous fresh-locking technology", and through the filling and sterilization process of the aseptic room temperature cold filling production line, the product realizes aseptic bottle blowing and aseptic room temperature filling, which retains the fresh aroma of coffee to the greatest extent and truly achieves the quality of "fresh cans".
Cleaner and more efficient, green production escorts the green mountains and rivers
Viewed from above, patches of gray-black photovoltaic panels cover the roof of the factory like scales.
In response to the national 3060 dual carbon policy, Wahaha actively promotes the installation of distributed photovoltaic power generation devices to gradually establish a multi-energy complementary, optimal combination of fossil energy and new energy, and then establish a low-carbon green electricity system with renewable energy as the main body. A total of 4.5MW of distributed photovoltaic has been installed in the Wahaha Wencheng factory, with a total power generation area equivalent to 14.69 standard football fields, an annual power consumption of about 1.3 million kWh, and a reduction of 1,020.5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Wahaha Wencheng Future Factory practices green production, reducing water consumption and sewage discharge and improving water resource utilization through steam condensate recovery, RO concentrate recovery, water-saving management of key water points, and odor biological purification treatment technology in the process of sewage treatment. Through the application of a series of green water-saving technologies, more than 10,000 tons of water can be saved annually.
What's more worth mentioning is that Wahaha Wencheng Future Factory has applied the flexible and intelligent low-emission CIP system independently developed by Wahaha for the first time. Each process pipeline in production can automatically call the corresponding cleaning program and cleaning parameters according to the different products and processes of the production to ensure that the cleaning time of each pipeline is the shortest, the effect is the best, and the energy consumption is the lowest. Special recycling and reuse technology is used for the acid and alkali used for cleaning, and part of the cleaning water is recycled after special process treatment, which greatly reduces water consumption and sewage discharge. After the implementation of the project, Wencheng factory will reduce cleaning water and sewage discharge by 52% and acid and alkali consumption by 30% every year.
Friendliness to the environment has always been an inseparable goal of industrial development. Wahaha Wencheng Future Factory has established a high-standard and highly integrated smart energy management system by realizing intelligent energy management, improving energy efficiency, and driving industrial development while caring for greener mountains and greener water.
Smarter and more flexible, the full-link upgrade leads the Industry 4.0 era
Behind a bottle of drink is a "butterfly change" breakthrough in Wahaha's full-link production autonomy and intelligent construction over the years.
As early as more than ten years ago, Wahaha began to lay out digital and intelligent transformation. From the earliest introduction of foreign advanced production lines for the whole line, to the later introduction of self-integrated automated production lines of single machines, to the design and planning of future factories by itself, Wahaha has taken the lead in realizing the transformation and upgrading from automation to intelligence through the "three-step" strategy.
It is precisely because of the deep cultivation of back-end innovation capabilities that Wahaha has become the only enterprise in the food and beverage industry with the ability to self-develop, design, and manufacture molds, beverage production equipment and industrial robots, and was selected as the "first batch of intelligent manufacturing demonstration units of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China" in 2015, and built the first intelligent beverage production line in the domestic industry in early 2017.
Today's Wencheng Future Factory is comprehensively confirming Wahaha's latest practice of intelligent manufacturing. Relying on the WERP platform, Wahaha Wencheng Factory can quickly realize the interconnection with the group's resources, information and data, integrate and apply the industry's most advanced aseptic intelligent manufacturing equipment, modular production process, "one-click intelligent control" ingredient center, intelligent visual inspection, 5G intelligent warehousing, intelligent logistics platform and other advanced technologies to achieve comprehensive improvement in efficiency, cost, quality and other indicators, and lead the construction of future factories in the food and beverage industry.
This also means that Wahaha Wencheng Future Factory has completely different from the Industry 3.0 format, but through the Internet of Things, the automation equipment is connected with orders, materials, networks, and data, and the whole link of information processing and calculation, and finally with the least waste, the most convenient and effective communication, reduce the intermediate participation links, and realize the high efficiency and energy saving of Industry 4.0 production.
Step by step, steady and steady. What can be seen is the bottle of drink on the shelf, and what is invisible is the steady and steady technological "internal strength" behind it, and consumers are expressing their enthusiasm and trust in the brand with good word-of-mouth evaluation and actual purchasing power. With the bottles of "Wahaha" in Wencheng's future factory rolled off the production line and sold nationwide, Wahaha will continue to move towards the "intelligent manufacturing benchmark" in the food and beverage industry.