Innocent's Blender: the safe and sustainable smart factory

Starting as a smoothie stall at a music festival in London in 1998, innocent is one of Europe’s leading juice and smoothie manufacturers. The reason for their success?

They went the extra mile in terms of creating preservative-free and not-from-concentrate smoothies with a clear focus on sustainability. Delve into innocent Smart Factory, which includes laser-guided vehicles, robotic systems, a high-bay warehouse and cold storage systems, a typical solution of the Smart cold storage.

In this video you’ll discover innocent Blender at a glance:

Business Success Story: innocent interview from E80 Group on YouTube.

The commitment towards decarbonisation

“Climate crisis is moving faster than climate action”: as a signatory to the Business Ambition for 1.5°C, innocent recognizes that the planet is at a critical juncture and is committed as part of its verified Science based target (SBT) to reducing the carbon footprint per bottle (from farm to fridge) by 50% between now and 2030 as well as reduce our Scope 1&2 emissions to zero by the same timeframe.

A factory better for the planet

On its path towards decarbonisation, innocent built the so-called “the Blender” at the Port of Rotterdam; this location facilitates the reception of raw materials, thereby removing significant amounts of carbon out of their supply chain. The Blender is indeed a factory that has thought about sustainability at every step of the design process: “It will be a factory that’s better for the planet, the people and our business, as we believe in being a business that’s good all round. We are big fans of collaboration and inspiring wider change, and we hope by sharing our learnings from the Blender we can play a part in shaping the future of sustainable production”.

Two brands towards carbon footprint reduction: innocent drinks and E80 Group

innocent’s demand was to design a state-of-the-art factory, fully automated and integrated, with strong focus on performance, safety and carbon footprint reduction. E80 Group has been able to fully satisfy the requirements by offering a turnkey solution, contributing to develop one of the most advanced Smart Factory in the beverage sector. From raw and packaging materials to cold storage and shipping of the finished products: all is managed, handled and controlled by E80 via its unique and powerful SM.I.LE80 software platform.

At the Blender factory, nine9 E80 automatic laser guided vehicles (LGVs) efficiently coordinate the distribution of all the ingredients into a 1500-pallets capacity store up to 8,8 meters high, which is a temperature-controlled warehouse that allows to conserve quality at a temperature that varies from 0° to 4°C. Our LGVs then bring the ingredients to the blending department according to the juice’s recipes.

In the production hall, 15 E80 automatic vehicles feed the machines with packaging and raw materials required and collect the finished products from the E80 robotic palletisers equipped with a universal gripper that manage all different SKUs without any changeover. The LGVs then transfer these pallets to the E80 wrapping and labelling islands.

Smoothies and packaging materials are stored into the E80 AS/RS high-density warehouse with 12.000 pallets locations and segregated areas for finished goods and packaging materials. The temperature-controlled crane store ensures the beverages’ preservation at a cold storage 4°C temperature, maximum energy savings and minimum maintenance costs, while presenting a high selectivity, fundamental requirement for this business.

Finally, the automatic laser guided vehicles retrieve the finished good pallets from the AS/RS and take them to the shipping docks, where every single delivery is prepared according to the customer order and placed onto gravity racks, facilitating and accelerating the loading process. Every day, up to 165 pallets are safely and efficiently transported throughout Europe in a 16-hour period.

Performance and safety are also guaranteed by the automatic empty pallet inspection system, which controls up to 200 pallets/hour and guarantees that only pallets complying with the customer’s requirements are reaching the production hall avoiding any issue at the palletisers and even more important inside the high bay warehouse and during the truck loading.

During the factory’s nonstop operations, E80 Group stands always by the innocent’s side, thanks to the remote 24/7 available customer service, which assures constant support to the Blender, protecting its investment over time.

Technology for safety and sustainability

Overall, the brand new, innovative factory will concretise the founders’ requirements, ensuring high capacity, while striving for a healthy and safe workplace. As the team claims: “What makes the Blender special is that we have a great set of tasty and high-quality products we pay attention to, but we also have an amazing team and a modern process and systems.” Following the policy to do business in the right way, as of 2018 innocent is officially a B Corporation - a certification acquired thanks to verified high social and environmental performance.

Highlights from innocent drinks Case Study:

• Thanks to E80 solutions, innocent manages the entire factory flow, from ingredients to storage and shipping.
• The Blender’s production chain is entirely integrated by E80’s complete range of systems.
• Among the solutions implemented, E80 systems guarantee cold storage operations, to ensure beverages’ preservation.
• By using LGVs instead of kilometres of conveyors and hundreds of motors for material handling, innocent lowers overall energy consumption and carbon emissions, as well as packaging and raw material waste.

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