The Synerlink group has become an indispensable supplier to Tunisia’s beverage industry, thanks to its ERMI brand of medium-range bottles.
The Tunisian market has a special seasonality in beverage consumption, with the main peaks at the period before Ramadan and the back-to-school time in September. The industry’s producers therefore must rely on flexible machines.
It is especially the speed of format change, easing adaptation to the market, that attracted participants in Tunisia’s beverage industry. The machines’ technical simplicity, allowing quick handling by operators, and their low maintenance cost are also major advantages for manufacturers in the sectors: Délice-Danone (Stial), Vitalait, Natilait, Gipa, Tunisilait, and Agromed have all chosen ERMI bottle fillers for packaging their products.
“These machines are 80% mechanical, with very few settings and little consumption of replacement parts. The customers appreciate them because they offer great flexibility and great ease of operation. The same machine allows filling of several formats of PET or HDPE bottles with two different neck diameters. The filling technology allows very precise filling, in ultra-clean or aseptic conditions, a multitude of products of various textures on the same filler, such as kefir, milk/juice drinks, laban, curd, fruit juices and more,” says Walid Kefi, director of Jets, a Synerlink partner company in Tunisia.“These machines are very accessible, and the nozzle plates are easy to access and remove. Hygiene and food safety are assured by a tried-and-true disinfection process on inverted bottles.”
“Closeness to the customer for technical assistance is paramount. Our technicians speak several languages, which makes it easy to train the teams and fosters good human relations,”says Gilles Demare, Sales Director at Synerlink.
Other projects are in progress for packaging liquid or semi-liquid products. “Thanks to Synerlink’s acquisition of ERMI, part of the American company Barry-Wehmiller Packaging Systems, our customers can rely on a solid partner and benefit from a very extensive line of machines and services. This is good news for them,” Kefi concludes.