Gutmann Brewery gives the HUBER Digital Platform top marks
As a long-standing HUBER customer who is very open to new solutions, Gutmann Brewery from Titting also took a look at our new digital platform. Florian Reinhold, responsible for the maintenance of the wastewater treatment plant at Gutmann, was given access to the customer area via shop.huber.de and immediately found his way around intuitively: ‘I can see our machine here and can see exactly which article I can reorder in the spare parts list,’ reports Florian Reinhold, who has already placed several online orders via our online shop. His feedback on user-friendliness is positive through and through. In particular, he no longer has to spend time leafing through folders and documents, which saves time and nerves.
In a meeting with Digital Platform Manager Christian Meier and Global Service employees Christian Thede and Verena Burger, Florian Reinhold talked about his experiences with other online platforms that he uses in his day-to-day work at the brewery for orders and customer service. With this digitalisation step, HUBER is the first machine manufacturer in the water and wastewater sector to take the lead and impress with its customer proximity and modern process solutions.
Live test of the platform at the customer's site
Christian Meier could experience the performance of the platform in a live test at the customer's site: ‘It was very informative to see how the customer arrives at the shop page, where his gaze falls first and where he instinctively wants to click,’ Meier summarises the customer visit positively. ’Customers with several installed HUBER machines in particular would benefit from a small visual representation to make it easier to differentiate between them. For us, the machine names and the necessary spare parts are commonplace, but a small picture and explanatory texts help the customer to find their way around even more easily when shopping online.’
History of the Gutmann plant
The private brewery Gutmann has been in good customer contact with HUBER SE for many years. In 1998, Gutmann built a new wastewater treatment plant for the treatment of production wastewater from the malting plant, brewhouse, bottle washing, bottling, etc. A HUBER Micro Strainer ROTAMAT® Ro9 for solids separation was installed at that time. After treatment in the mixing and equalising reservoir (with air intake and homogenisation), the wastewater is discharged to the municipal wastewater treatment plant, as the required COD discharge values or PE values are achieved with this wastewater treatment plant. As Gutmann's production increased enormously at that time, the plant had to treat more production wastewater. The screening system was able to cope with this increase without any problems, but the aerated mixing and equalising reservoir had the problem of producing too much sludge and discharging it into the wastewater treatment plant. Due to the increased sludge discharge in the outlet to the wastewater treatment plant, the required inlet values were no longer achieved.
Solution thanks to own wastewater treatment plant
Gutmann contacted HUBER again in May 2003 and explained their problem with the increased sludge accumulation and its effects. We suggested to treat the effluent of the mixing and equalising reservoir with our ROTAMAT® Disc Thickener RoS2S (trial unit) to retain the sludge and to show the customer the machine in operation.
After the analysis of the effluent of the trial plant reached a solids content of 0.4% DS, flocculant tests were carried out. The best floc formation was achieved with a product from CIBA, which was therefore used for the first start-up of the disc thickener. The sludge in the inlet with 0.4 % DS was immediately thickened to 7.20 % DS. The retained sludge was pumped back into the mixing and equalising reservoir to increase the sludge concentration there. The almost solids-free and crystal-clear filtrate had a load of 1 to 2 ml/litre. This meant that it could flow into the sewer without any concerns.
One of the first HUBER Disc Thickener S-DISC
Gutmann was so satisfied with the HUBER machines and solutions that the decision-makers decided to choose one again in 2017 for the construction of their own wastewater treatment plant. The plant was to have a capacity of 16,000 PE, as the municipal wastewater treatment plant in Titting with a design for 6,000 PE was not sufficient. One of the first HUBER Disc Thickeners S-DISC was then installed there and is running to the highest satisfaction.
Close ties in the future
The exchange ended with an interesting brewery tour on the subject of CO2 footprint and emissions, which was a successful end to the meeting. Florian Reinhold confirmed that he will continue to process quotations in PDF form and orders directly via the HUBER Digital Platform. Our team is grateful for the authentic and helpful exchange.
