MARTENS BREWERY

IS THIS THE BREWERY

OF THE FUTURE?
The Martens family has been in the brewing business for generations, longer than better-known
Guinness, but when it comes to thinking about the future its enviable heritage poses no obstacles.
Managing director Jan Martens has embraced continuous brewing, crossflow filtration, plastic
packaging and other state-of-the-art practices with enthusiasm. Report by editor Larry Nelson

ou may not be familiar with Martens,

a Belgian family brewer braced with a
proud heritage. Beer was first brewed
in 1758, a year earlier than the embryonic efforts of Arthur Guinness at St Jamess
Gate, in the village of Bocholt, making it the
Limburg regions oldest brewery.
Today the firm is headed by eighth-generation
descendants, managing director Jan Martens,
and his brother Fons. And while Martens celebrated its 250th anniversary in memorable style
in the autumn of 2008, according at all accounts,
this is a brewer clearly unshackled from its past,
embracing the future with gusto.
Heres why: the brewery is the first to have
commercialised continuous brewing successfully.
In 2007 Martens cut the ribbon on a three million
hectolitre greenfield brewery, powered by the
innovative Meurabrew system. The brewery is
astonishingly compact for its rated capacity: the
malt intake, milling, brewing vessels, mash filters,
filtration systems, cold cellar, yeast handling, CIP
system and control room are all housed in a building just 60 by 90 metres. (And theres room to
expand filtration capacity within these dimensions;
walls would have to be knocked down to extend
the tank farm or brewhouse.)
A second out-of-the-norm practice is evident
in the quiet-ish bottling hall. In contrast to tra-

ditionalists wedded to packaging their brands

in metal cans or glass bottles, Martens has
wholeheartedly embraced a third alternative. All
of the brewerys output, currently around 2mhl,
is packaged in plastic, mostly half-litre capacity
for the German take home market, but 33cl, 66cl
and one-litre bottles are produced as well.
This is a plant that has been described in various corners as the Brewery of the Future streamlined production processes, water and energy
efficient, a consistent, quality product. Yet its a
term that doesnt sit well with Jan, who prefers
state-of-theart or as a descriptor. And whats in
place here are all proven technologies, he adds.
It is a response that demurs, in keeping with
the character of a modest man. And yet something special is happening at Martens, in this
quiet corner of Belgium. This is a brewery unlike
any other and, as such, has lessons to offer the
world at large.

Martens lost 500,000 hectolitres of business.

So plastic bottles were investigated, with
Martens rejecting multilayer solutions, selecting
instead Sidel Actis technology that deposits a
layer of hydrogenated amorphous carbon on the
inside of a PET bottle. Two blow molders and five
Sidel Actis coating machines, rated at 50,000
bottles per hour, were installed in a new building
outside of Bocholt.
Plastics, lightweight and perfectly recyclable,
proved popular in Germany from their introduction. (Today own-label beer brewed for supermarkets accounts for 85% of Martens business.) By
2005, a happier problem was posed: how was
one to keep up with demand that was stretching
existing capacity?
Here Jan Martens speaks of the proverbial
blank sheet of paper, hiring a team of brewing
engineers with a remit to think outside the box,
one that compared and contrasted processes
outside the brewing industry.
My idea was to already construct on paper
a brewery where efficiency is the leading part.
There were no fixed ideas about a brewery, he
recounts. We wanted a fully automated system,
with as low labour as possible. We wanted a system where the extract stayed in the system.
Martens then went to suppliers, ultimately
partnering with Meura for the brewhouse; Norit
for the overall plant design and cold block; plus
additional plastic packaging equipment and a
bottling line from Sidel.
This was and is an efficient brewery, from
the word go. Construction of the steel frame
and blown polyurethane building was tidy, taking
less than a year from the brewhouse order being
placed with Meura to production commencing
in May 2007. Jan reports that the first brew
was within specifications; there was no need to
blend beer from the classic Martens brewery.
(This remains in operation, producing around
500,000hl of Martens brands, packaged in a
mix of keg, can, and glass bottle.)

Unexpected Pfand push

From the 1960s Martens had been a supplier
of own-label beer brands to German discount
supermarket chains. This was a market transformed overnight with the introduction of the
Pfand in January 2003, a law requiring deposits
on all single-use containers, leading to an abrupt
collapse of sales of canned beer. Overnight

Batch brewhouse

Continuous brewhouse

Capacity

12 brews/day of 400hl cold

wort at 20P

200hl/h of cold wort at 20P

Pumps

Mash: 1500hl/h 15KW

Wort: 3600hl/h 30KW

Mash: 180hl/h 5.5KW

Wort: 225hl/h 4KW

Utilities

Steam peak flow: 14 T/h

Water peak flow: 650hl/h
Electricity installed: 375kW
Electricity peak: 300kW
Peak cooling power: 4,650kW

Steam peak flow: 3T/h

Water peak flow: 220hl/h
Electricity installed: 250kW
Electricity peak: 200kW
Peak cooling power: 2,200kW

The future versus the classic: comparison of energy requirements at a 3mhl brewery Source: Meura

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MARTENS BREWERY

Batch (almost) no more

A tour of the Martens plant, guided in turn
by brewmaster Bert Van Hecke and packaging
operations manager Aart Versendaal, proves a
mind-bending experience. Gone are traditional
cycle times and brew lengths; everything here
is about flows.
Almost, that is. While the brewing process
can be continuous from milling, the process
is still batched, with a brew started every 45
minutes. This is high gravity brewing, at 20Plato
with a flow rate of 200 hectolitres per hour.
Jan Martens says that the brewery will move
across to continuous mashing-in mode in due
course. Step-by-step were going further and
using the technology which is installed there, but
now its to give everybody the comfort that it is
still controllable.
Of interest is the vessel heating: Meuras
Aflosjet system provides direct clean steam
heating, resulting in the elimination of fouling and
a need for double jackets while allowing continuous operation.
The Meurabrew mash tun consists of four
vessels, the first mashing in at 45C, with the
temperature of subsequent tanks increasing, to
63C, 72C, and 78C prior to transfer to the
mash filter. (There are two other vessels, for the
mashing and cooking of adjuncts for products
destined for markets other than Reinheitsgebotbound German consumers.) According to Van
Hecke, the maximum time through the vessels is
one and a half hours.
There are three Meura 2001 mash filters in
operation: one is always filling; one is always
sparging and the third is emptying or ready to
receive fresh wort. Van Hecke estimates that it
takes two hours from filling to emptying.
As with mashing in, wort boiling moves through
a series of kettles. Hop extracts are dosed in the
first tank, boiled in the second tank and then moved
to a wort settling tank, with clarification necessary
prior to volatile stripping in order to avoid fouling
the column with hot trub. Meura notes that with the
avoidance of oxidation of the trub the material can
be reused and transferred back to the mash filter.
The wort then passes through a volatile stripping distillation column. The wort that emerges is
better than a normal brewery, says Van Hecke,
citing lower levels of DMS and aldehydes and
reduced energy use. There are two wort coolers
in parallel, with one cleaned when the other is
cooling the wort.
Martens fermentation room is comprised of 14
NH-cooled 6,000 hectolitre vertical tanks; each
tank is filled in turn with 4,800 hectolitres, the days
brewing output 200hl/h times 24. Fermentation
and maturation is a short-lived efficient business,
around 10 days. Yeast is used for six generations.
Maturation is brief, perhaps two days at most.

Brew Nov/Dec 2009.indd 33

In keeping with Jan Martens blank sheet of

paper, the use of diatomaceous earth in filtration
wasnt even considered. Martens opted for Norit
X-Flows Beer Membrane Filter, which can process up to 600hl per hour at 16P. (The lower
post-boil strength comes from the beer being
pushed through pipes by deaerated brewing
water, an extract loss reduction practice that
surprisingly few brewers adopt.)
Van Hecke enthuses about BMFs capabilities,
with its pumps shifting 10,000hl an hour across
the filters. The beer quality is protected, with no
oxygen uptake.
From here the product moves to bright beer
tanks, where it is held for no more than two days
before moving to the bottling lines.

Spelling out the benefits

This brief description doesnt do the brewery justice Jan notes that he is routinely
contacted by his peers wanting to have a look
around but theres enough detail to suggest
a plethora of benefits.
Remember that Martens objectives were to
create a brewery operating at the lowest variable
cost possible, including minimisation of extract
loss; a controllable consistency in production
methods; and Reinheitsgebot-quality product.
Its worth noting at this juncture that Jan
trained as a civil engineer, his degree from the
Universit Catholique de Louvain. Hes been
working at the brewery for the past 18 years, but
he retains the engineering mindset.
Here, of course, the recipe is fixed. You
should be able to every day repeat the process.
If statistics show a bit out of the average, you
look to see what is going on. But you can manage this with an engineer, thats my philosophy.
On the logical flip side, Jan is entertainingly
suspicious of brewers artistic propensities. A
brewer changes the recipe; and you dont need
to, he says.
Martens target is to have only a 2.5% extract
loss from mashing in to the bottling line; to
date losses range between 3-4%. Automation,
a Wonderware application, has allowed for the
minimal two-man workforce in the brewhouse but
it has required bedding in. Were still working on
that, to optimise to the left and to the right, getting out the benefits, Jan reports.
In terms of sustainability, continuous brewing and crossflow filtration offer incredible reductions
in water and energy require-

ments. Jan estimates a 2:1 hl/hl ratio for water

to beer. Overall water use is managed closely:
the brewery, because of its size, requires only
one Norit-supplied CIP system, for example.
Carbon dioxide is also recovered thanks to a
system supplied by Norit Haffmans; Martens is
CO2 self-sufficient.
The genius of continuous brewing becomes
apparent in energy use. Batch processes by definition generate energy peaks and troughs; demand
is more evenly distributed with Meurabrew. (Jeroen
Vandenbussche, Meuras sales and marketing
manager, estimates that the system requires
5-6 tonnes of steam per hour; a traditional batch
brewhouse, operating on a 14 brews a day, would
gobble 12-15 tonnes of steam per hour, requiring
additional steam generating capacity to boot.)
Continuous brewing also relives stresses evident elsewhere in a classic batch brewery. Pipe
diameters are smaller, for example, no larger than
DN80. The implication is less pumping is required
and therefore smaller, less expensive to buy and
operate pumps. Energy savings are everywhere.
Having embraced continuous brewing, would
Martens be interested in the long-standing but
neglected technology of continuous fermentation? Its an area of interest. Jan says, If we
boost up the production here you should perhaps
see something here.

Plastics revolution
Outside of perhaps unknown Russian packaging operations, Martens is arguably the worlds
largest producer of beer in plastic bottles. It
is no lightweight (pun intended) when it comes
to plastic packaging. Rather than buy prefabricated bottles from a third party, it has gone
in wholeheartedly in capex terms. Following on

Jan Martens: pushing the

outside of the envelope with
the latest technology

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MARTENS BREWERY

from its initial order for three Sidel Actis coating

machines, Martens has since acquired two additional machines. There are two Sidel-supplied
blow molders in operation.
This year Martens tapped KHS for an entire
blow molding and coating line, consisting of an
InnoPET Blomax 8, an InnoPET Plasmax 12D, an
air conveyor system and palletising area. The
line is rated at 12,000bph; according to Jan, it is
used primarily for half-litre bottles, the standard
size for the German take-home market.
There are two filling lines, an older KHS line
joined later by a Sidel line. Both are rated at
40,000 bottles per hour. Beer is diluted to 12P,
blended to the correct CO2 levels, and flash pasteurised just prior to filling.
In total Martens is capable of producing 62,000
plastic bottles per hour. With filling line capacity at 80,000bph, it leaves a potential deficit of
18,000bph. PET bottle production can be shrinkwrapped and sent to warehouse storage; stocks
are built up during the spring prior to the onset of
peak summer demand. Some bottles are sold on
to other brewers, such as Bitburger in Germany.
Based on its evolving experience Martens is
a leader in working with plastic packaging. Some
touches are homemade common sense: for
example, Aart Versendaal points to circular tubes
with knife blades inserted that are welded next
to the packaging lines filled bottle inspectors.
These were created to slice open defective filled
bottles, a time saver compared to having to open
and drain the bottles.
Other advances have further-reaching implications. When Martens started working with preforms, the industry-best weight for a half-litre bottle was 28gm. Today, Jan Martens reports, the
weight is been reduced to 22.4gm, a dramatic
improvement that has achieved in-house.
The brewery is looking at extending packaging shelf-life. Beer for the German market carries
a six-month expiry date; product destined further
afield has a nine-month date stamp. Jan lists
three areas of possible improvement: the filling
process, as with injecting nitrogen to crowd out
oxygen just prior to filing; the packaging material; and the product itself.
And with this third option theres further
evidence of out-of-the-box thinking. Jan suggests
that some yeast could be injected, acting as an
oxygen scavenger. (Could this also improve beer
flavour as well as extend shelf life?)
Naturally Jan is interested in recent developments by suppliers to develop technology that will
allow multiple colours to be applied to plastics,
potentially eliminating the need for labels. KHS
announced at drinktec that it hopes to have such a
system available by the fourth quarter of 2010; Jan
says that he is aware of a second supplier working
on similar technology, but wont name names.
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began production in 2007, and like Martens has

a 200hl/h output at 20Plato. Suzhou began
brewing Martens 1758, a brand developed for
Chinese consumers, last year.
Despite the obvious economic and environmental advantages on display at Bocholt, the
brewing industry hasnt rushed to embrace
the technology. Meuras Vandenbussche notes
that as the technology cannot be retrofitted,
it is dependent on greenfield projects. In a
global market wracked by recession and overcapacity he believes that its day will come, but
not just yet.
For Jan the benefits of the new brewery should
be virtually self-evident. I think the brewing world
is very conservative. They look very much after
the image of the beer and the brand. They still
think that the brand has to be made in a classic
brewery. They think people like the brewery and
the copper kettles but I think thats gone.
As for Martens itself, Jan envisions further
growth, with the new brewery expanding capacity
both in brewing and packaging within the next two
years. And his openness to alternatives remains:
packaging beer could be in PET or cans.
Yet plastic packaging remains at the core of
the business. Jan says, We are not InBev; we
are not Heineken; we are still family-owned and
we need to look for a niche. We cannot compete
with them with their weapons. So our drive is to
do it another way.
Plastics, lightweight and recyclable, may well
be more environmentally friendly that imagined.
Utilising date from Martens, last year Sidel published research on the environmental impact of
plastic packaging versus glass bottles and steel
and aluminium cans. This Life Cycle Analysis was
carried out by an independent third party. Based
on production of 100 litre samples in each type
of packaging, the headline conclusion was that
steel cans and PET bottles contribute the least
to global warming and air acidification, and that
the key determinants are recycling rates and
packaging weight.
Say for a moment that Martens is not the
Brewery of the Future. Then what is it? For Jan
Martens theres a one word answer: sustainability. While further reductions in carbon
dioxide emissions are important, it is not the
only problem.
Breweries have been built in such a conservative way for decades, he explains. I think
theres a lot more to do to remove water and CO2
and energy going into the atmosphere. We are a
little bit in front of that debate and we would like
to be a player in that discussion.
As well Martens should be chances are that
the narrow back roads to Bocholt will continue to
be travelled by brewers seeking a new direction
to the future.

Brewmaster Bert Van Hecke

Packaging operations manager Aart Versendaal

It is going to break through, I am very sure,

he says. We would like to be the first in the
marketplace.
For the better part of a decade the brewing
industry has been anticipating a breakthrough
in consumer acceptance of beer packaged
plastics. But plastics havent really set the world
on fire as yet, and one wonders why. Jan thinks
change will come, yet he takes a long-term, generational view on the change of pace.
Lets be honest, theres a difference between
elderly people and youngsters in drinking habits,
he explains. And you need today to have the
shape and image of glass. You can do a lot of nice
things with PET but I think its too early yet.
Yet Jan also offers the brewing industry
could do more as well to encourage change.
Its not the end consumer whos the problem;
its the suppliers and the brewers and the
distributors, he argues. The brewers are too
conservative because they dont want to cannibalise what they have today. And thats certainly
the case in China.

The unfurling future

Commercialisation of continuous brewing is
progressing slowly. There is just one other
brewery in the world that has embraced the
technology, a greenfield project in Suzhou, China
located 150 kilometres west of Shanghai, that
is a mirror image of Martens brewery. In fact,
Martens has an equity stake in Sino Belgium
Beer (Suzhou) Ltd, a joint venture with Taiwanbased conglomerate Far Eastern Group, which
supplies plastic bottle preforms. The brewery
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