The Tunisian company SOTUVER is a manufacturer of hollow glass producing containers for the food industry since 1967. The listed company produces bottles and glassware in two melting furnaces for flint and green color at its site in Djebel Oust (30 km south of Tunis, Tunisia) for the North African market, Western and Central African countries as well as the South European market. Up to now, the production capacity of the two furnaces was 120,000 tons per year in total. Sotuver produces three colors: flint, emerald green and antic green.
ZIPPE Industrieanlagen GmbH has already been involved in the building of the first batch house, back then at the old plant site within Tunis.
In view of the ever increasing demand, Sotuver approached ZIPPE in June 2019 with the new project “batch preparation of new furnace 3”. The new furnace should have a total production capacity of 110,000 tons per year (300 t/d) with a cullet portion of abt. 15%. The production is carried out on four IS-lines. The new furnace will be built directly next to the two existing melting furnaces.
In March 2020, ZIPPE received the order to supply the batch house, batch transport, and cullet return system. Moreover, ZIPPE was ordered for the planning and supply of a recycling plant for post-consumer glass cullet with a capacity of 360 t/d. Both plants are expected to be commissioned in July 2021. ZIPPE is responsible for the overall planning of the plants and supplies the equipment, the electrical control system, and offers support during the installation and commissioning period. The steel works as well as the installation works will be provided locally.
The new batch house consists of 17 silos in total. For one part these silos are fed by mechanical transport and for the other part they are fed pneumatically by silo trucks or a pneumatic sender system. For this project Zippe pays special attention to a high redundancy for the charging possibilities. Raw materials are weighed through an additive weighing process and are conveyed into a mixer by a discharge belt. The mixer has a volume of 1.875l and is supplied by ZIPPE. Batch transport is effected by a conveying belt system into both dog houses of the regenerative U-flame furnace.
For the cullet return system, ZIPPE supplies a scraping conveyor for charging hot cullet as well as a main crushing station among other equipment.
Sotuver already has a cullet post-consumer recycling plant in operation which however does not have the sufficient capacity for the future. As an essential component of the new post-consumer glass recycling plant, ZIPPE installs a two roller crusher, a magnet drum, and an eddy current seperator as well as a screen tray with CSP sorting level.
ZIPPE is happy about the order and hopes to contribute to a further positive development of the company.
