PARADIGM SHIFT
IN PROCESS CONTROL
Real-time measurement of microbiological quality
17 bottling plants at five locations for water, fruit juices and beer. Committed to
its quality promise to the customers, Romaqua largely relies on the production lines
of the German manufacturer Krones. When it comes to product quality and monitoring,
Romaqua has now taken a further step into the future and installed the first fully automated
device for measuring the microbiological quality of water in its most advanced mineral
10 · BBII 6/2020
Romaqua, the biggest producer of mineral water in Romania, operates
water production line in Borsec, which was only completed in 2019.
in the process completely automatically
instead of determining the
quality of manually drawn samples
after several days of waiting in the
laboratory, was therefore at the top
of the priority list for the Romaqua
team.
In their search for a solution to
quickly determine the microbiological
quality of water, they encountered
VWMS in Lower Austria: the
company offers a device called
“ColiMinder,” which is capable of
measuring microbiological quality
fully automated and within 15 minutes.
A first inquiry at VWMS, a
presentation, and three weeks later
a ColiMinder was installed in the
production process at Romaqua –
despite the lockdown throughout
entire Europe.
mined by using culture-based lab
methods, which take up to three
days to obtain a result. The fact
that this important information on
product quality is only available
after days of waiting must be taken
into account through effective risk
management and great efforts
in quality assurance.There is a
lot at stake: Production stoppages
or even product recalls can inflict
major economic damage and
cause lasting impairment to
a brand’s reputation.
The focus is on quality
Being able to perform a measurement
directly in the process or
even to monitor the microbiology
Knowing the status of the microbiological
water quality in real-
time, this is what the laboratory
and quality managers of the
Romaqua site in Borsec wanted
to achieve. Until now, they have
waited for days for the result on
the microbiological quality and
there was no chance to get this
important information faster.
The microbiological
dimension
Microbiological quality is one of the
most important water quality parameters
in the food industry in
general and in beverage production
in particular. Until now, this important
parameter has been deter-