Cruise passenger numbers are booming all over the world. With the new structure, GEA has developed the key advantage in a rapidly growing and demanding market. By combining different expertise GEA is able to offer customers a broader product portfolio from a single source to make sure that crew and passengers feel comfortable.

Regarding current market trends in the cruise industry like ship size and sustainability, GEA is able to meet the customers’ demands with environmentally-friendly equipment and tailor-made solutions. At the Marine Trade Fairs Seatrade Cruise Global, currently taking place in Fort Lauderdale, USA, (March 13-16, 2017, German Pavilion, booth 229-28), as well as the upcoming NorShipping in Oslo, Norway, (May 30 - June 2, 2017, hall E, booth 03-09) GEA will highlight the latest technologies and service solutions for the marine industry.

Size matters – GEA does it all

At the moment, some cruise lines are expanding the size of their cruise vessels. The largest cruise ship for example has capacity for 6,000 passengers, but this number will be shortly increased to new dimensions. A reverse development is that of smaller, more exclusive cruise vessels with capacity for just 200 passengers; a market tendency that signals a high level of luxury with rarer and more remote destinations. Two trends appealing to different segments, but both are relevant to GEA as the equipment on these ship types is part of GEA’s portfolio.

When it comes to important aspects like sustainability and reduction of carbon footprint, GEA is able to meet these demands as all equipment is being optimized regularly in terms of low energy consumption and waste production. Michael Fibbe, Product Sales Manager for GEA’s Marine Equipment, underlines: “The key words are less energy consumption and less emissions, which GEA can tailor to any customers’ requirements. We even design specialized systems such as bilge purifiers that clean the bilge water – thus protecting the ocean by ensuring that no oil is dumped in the water.” New developments like the GEA CatFineMaster for maximum fuel quality, or the GEA BallastMaster marineX with a new inline driver design, as well as the future-proof 5ppm GEA BilgeMaster systems – all in line with IMO standards – set new standards in the Marine industry.

Sustainable solutions for cooling by using CO2

Marc Prinsen, Head of Application Center Marine at GEA, adds: ”We also challenge the high demand of sustainable solutions to phase out synthetic refrigerants and replace them with natural ones, like CO2. Using CO2 for cooling purposes clearly has two advantages: Due to an optimized configuration with CO2 we can lower the freezing temperature. This way the power consumption will become more efficient and at the same time you improve the carbon footprint. Furthermore we offer heat recovery solutions that benefit both energy consumption and the environment.”

Full confidence in GEA’s marine equipment

For many years, the cruise ship industry fully trusts GEA and its solutions as it has doubled its orders for GEA’s technology meeting their continuously rising needs. And according to Michael Fibbe, this positive development is an indication of a market that holds a lot of promise for GEA: “The leading cruise ship owners and builders emphasize their trust in GEA as we experience a vast increase to equip newly built ships with GEA technology. And thanks to the new GEA structure, one single point of contact can offer customers a much wider range of equipment today. So they can easily meet the requirements of the industry and their guests. But especially the one-face-to-the-customer philosophy makes GEA more effective than ever before when it comes to order execution.”

As a leading supplier of high performance equipment for the marine industry, GEA’s solutions range from treating fuel oil, lube oil, sludge, bilge and ballast water, while air conditioning, refrigeration, and freezing technology ensure that passengers are comfortable and that the ship arrives in good condition.

GEA Service – Optimized OPEX across the ship lifetime

Excellent machines or equipment are one thing, the right service is another. With several options of the new service concept “GEA Service – For your continued success” GEA customers are optimally being supported throughout the entire life cycle of their installed systems and components. From project engineering, installation, and commissioning to maintaining and improving the performance of the customer’s equipment: GEA is the first choice, one-stop call for Total Productive Maintenance.

As of February 1st, 2017, Ansgar Hoffmann, who was previously responsible for GEA’s North & Central Europe Region, will be taking over the DACH & Eastern Europe Region from Dr. Hugo Blaum, who is retiring.

Ann Cuylaerts, previously Head of GEA France and GEA Maghreb, will be taking up the vacant position of Regional Head of North & Central Europe. In their new functions, Ann Cuylaerts and Ansgar Hoffmann will be reporting directly to Jürg Oleas, Chairman of the Executive Board of GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft.

After spending several years as a consultant, Hoffmann, a German national who has a degree in business IT, joined GEA in 2003 and has held various management functions during that time, including the position of a managing director inside the former GEA Heat Exchangers segment and a term as Business Unit Leader and General Sales Manager of the former GEA Farm Technologies segment. Cuylaerts, a Belgian national, has a Master’s Degree in Process Engineering (with a focus on biochemistry) and has been with GEA since 1994. She started her career in Belgium as a sales engineer and, like Ansgar Hoffmann, has held a variety of management functions, mainly in the field of mechanical separation.

“On behalf of the entire Executive Board, I would like to thank Hugo Blaum for his long and extremely successful years of service for GEA. Over the last 15 years, his excellent technical know-how and outstanding leadership style have endeared him to staff and management alike and helped to sustain positive business growth. We would like to take this opportunity to wish Hugo Blaum all the very best on his retirement. Ansgar Hoffmann and Ann Cuylaerts are highly experienced leaders who will help us to maintain continuity in the service we provide to our customers,” said Jürg Oleas.

“Inspiring Food Solutions” is the theme for GEA’s stand at IPPE in Atlanta (Georgia, USA), from January 31 to February 2. One new product, several major re-designs, and a selection of additional key machines are set to inspire visitors at the show.

The launches include an entry-level model of the GEA PowerPak thermoformer as well as re-designs of the GEA MultiDrum and GEA MultiJector. These are joined by the latest developments of the GEA CookStar three-phase spiral oven and an introduction of separation processes for by-products. All these products aim to help customers to keep pace with industry trends and consumer demands – by combining cutting-edge technology with the little “homestyle” extra to industrial food processing:

Entry-level thermoformer

One of the two headliners from packaging activity is a new GEA PowerPak configuration especially developed as a basic machine with limited functionality – the GEA DeltaPak. The whole GEA PowerPak range has been re-defined to make it easier for customers to specify a thermoformer for a specific application. This makes packaging solutions more cost-effective by omitting functions that are not required. The latest addition is an entry-level configuration that gives smaller-scale packaging operations access to the quality and reliability of the GEA PowerPak platform.

Beating the drum for homestyle breading

Homestyle breading is a fast-growing trend for coating poultry products, and the GEA MultiDrum can authentically reproduce this coating technique in an automated industrial environment. The recently introduced machine was met with enthusiasm by poultry processors looking for an integrated line solution that gives the true homestyle look, feel, and taste in a cost-effective way. The newest version of the GEA MultiDrum – developed for the American market with a larger belt width and more robust features overall – is quickly becoming the standard for homestyle breading.

Evolving the marination process

Marination is represented on the stand by an innovative continuous in-line injection solution. Developed to boost the yield of bone-in and skin-on poultry products such as chicken wings, drumsticks, thighs, legs, and whole or half birds, the GEA MultiJector combines controlled brine injection with short massaging to optimize brine distribution. The multi-purpose brine injector does not compromise on the accuracy or performance you can get from an application-specific machine. It sets new standards for hygiene, food safety, and cleanability. It is a flexible solution for injecting bone-in, boneless, and delicate products, and is packed with cutting-edge technology that adds value to your products and processes.

Three-phase spiral oven

The latest developments in the third-generation GEA CookStar spiral oven are also highlighted on the stand. This machine has evolved into the only three-phase cooking concept in a double-spiral configuration – thanks to its active booster zone that forms a bridge between two large spiral zones. Its ability to use steam, hot air, roasting, smoking, and drying in any combination makes the GEA CookStar the most flexible solution available for industrial cooking.

There is more to an animal than the meat

Animal oils, fats, and high-value proteins – but also skin, bones, blood, etc. – are valuable raw materials, and their production and processing make a major contribution to profitability in the meat industry. GEA supports edible and inedible rendering, gelatin production, as well as the recovery of valuable food-grade proteins such as protein hydrolysate and proteins from blood plasma. Sanitary design, highest yields, and top quality of the end products – these are only some of the benefits that GEA decanters, disc-stack centrifuges, and process lines offer to processors of animal by-products.

GEA and Siemens AG announce a partnership to bring continuous manufacturing to the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry by offering an integrated continuous tablet manufacturing line.

The collaboration will deliver both production benefits, in terms of reduced project execution risk, higher quality and cost-effective manufacturing and customer benefits in the form of seamlessly integrated technologies, expertise and support.

As an important supplier of process technology and operational systems, GEA has established itself as a leading solution provider in the pharmaceutical industry. The collaboration with Siemens reinforces this global position and now offers life sciences companies — from large multinational organizations to regional specialists and CMOs — an experienced partner to help them implement continuous manufacturing platforms. Comprising GEA’s ConsiGma™ continuous manufacturing platform equipped with a Siemens Automation & Industrial IT solution, including Sipat for PAT Data Management, the combined technologies offer both wet granulation and direct compression in a standard-setting solution for continuous tablet production in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry.

“Amalgamating our state-of-the-art continuous processing technology with Siemens’ automation systems allows us to further support the US Food and Drug Administration’s Pharmaceutical Quality for the 21st Century program and help pharmaceutical companies to adopt continuous manufacturing (CM) technologies and modernize their production infrastructure,” said Frans Maas, Vice President, APC Pharma Solids, GEA. “Together, our combined experience and expertise will provide significant industry benefits as pharmaceutical manufacturers transition towards continuous manufacturing,” he added. “The use of CM technologies and inline PAT monitoring is a key driver of building quality by design (QbD) into the complete product lifecycle, from R&D through to manufacturing, with the ultimate aim of getting safer medicines to market in a more efficient and cost-effective way,” added Hartmut Klocker, Vice President Market Development Board Pharma.

The ConsiGma™ continuous tableting line is a multipurpose platform that has been designed to transfer powder into coated tablets in development, pilot, clinical and production volumes in a single compact unit. The system can perform dosing and mixing of raw materials, wet or dry granulation, drying, tableting, coating and quality control, all in one line. From powder to coated tablet, ConsiGma™ allows pharmaceutical companies to continuously process and manufacture oral solid dosage forms. Offering significant reductions in development time and raw material (API) use, process and energy costs can be considerably decreased using this groundbreaking technology while maintaining quality and increasing manufacturing efficiency.

Simatic Sipat is a scalable and modular software solution that enables companies to extend their PAT-based quality control strategies on a step-by-step basis within the scope of a Quality by Design-based approach. With PAT, product development and production processes can be monitored, controlled and optimized by measuring and calculating the Critical-to-Quality Attributes (CQA’s) of the end product in real-time. This continuous monitoring of product quality can prevent deviations from specifications and therefore reduce production costs. Also, it allows for Real Time Release Testing so that final quality inspections can be reduced or eliminated. Simatic Sipat is Siemens’ PAT Data Management solution that integrates PAT activities of an entire line — hence shortening time-to-market significantly.