beer production
Sevilla brewery has a production capacity of 500 million litres of beer per year. Credit: Ultimaker BV.

Heineken has selected Ultimaker’s S5 3D printing solutions to produce various custom safety equipment, tools and functional machine parts.

The partnership will support Heineken’s manufacturing activities at its brewery in Seville, Spain. The company’s engineers have already been using Ultimaker 2+ 3D printer for the past year.

Heineken global supply chain procurement official Isabelle Haenen said: “We’re still in the first stages of 3D printing, but we’ve already seen a reduction of costs in the applications that we found by 70%-90% and also a decrease of the delivery time of these applications of 70%-90%.

“The ability to create custom solutions straight from the factory floor is such a game-changer for the manufacturing industry.”

“Local manufacturing helps us a lot in increasing uptime, efficiency and output. We use 3D printing to optimise the manufacturing line, create maintenance and quality control tools, and create tools for our machines which help us to reduce change over time.”

With a production capacity of 500 million litres of beer per year, Sevilla brewery has been producing several brands of Heineken-owned beers.

Ultimaker CEO Jos Burger said: “Every company has its own unique challenges in the production process, which is why the ability to create custom solutions straight from the factory floor is such a game-changer for the manufacturing industry.

“We have enjoyed watching the use case evolve over the past year, from safety applications to the creation of fully functional parts for machines that lead to significant savings, and we cannot wait to see what they come up with next.”