Karlovy Vary, in western Czech Republic, is a traditional spa town, with the healing properties of its springs being exploited since the 15th century. 

One of the spa’s most famous citizens was Heinrich Mattoni. In 1873, Mattoni laid the foundation for the mineral water spring named after him when he purchased the little spa town of Kyselka, located about 10 kilometers downstream from Karlovy Vary on the River Ohře. Mattoni had a separate railroad laid for the distribution of his water, and by 1898, he was selling approximately eight million bottles a year, all labeled with the red eagle from his family coat of arms.

Under the ownership of the Pasquale family from Italy since 1991, Mattoni 1873, as the brand is now called, is the largest distributor of soft drinks in Central Europe, with production sites in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria and Serbia. The company has invested more than €40 million ($43.66 million) in technology for its various plants in the last three years.

New canning line

Mattoni 1873’s most recent acquisition is a turnkey canning line from KHS, on which mineral water is being filled into recyclable beverage cans for the first time in the Czech Republic. Moreover, these are already made of around 70% recycled aluminum. 

“Our new, ultramodern system adds the final container category to our portfolio that has been lacking to date,” says executive president and company founder Alessandro Pasquale. “We can now supply the market for non-alcoholic beverages with all styles of beverage packaging. And we’re now also in the position to supply our home market with beverages from the licensed Pepsi portfolio more easily, whose canned products we previously had to bring in from outside the country.” 

In addition to an Innofill Can C can filler with an output of up to 20,000 containers per hour, the new KHS line includes a palletizer and a depalletizer, a blending system, a tunnel pasteurizer and two shrink packers with and without trays. 

“All told, up to 12 different formats and a huge variety of products are processed on our machines,” says Lubomir Neubauer, area sales manager for the Czech Republic and Slovakia at KHS. “We’ve thus configured the system so that it gives the customer maximum flexibility. The Innofill Can C especially that, unlike the high-performance Innofill Can DVD can filler most commonly used to date caters for the medium capacity range, is the perfect choice here.”

Protecting natural springs and cutting emissions

The bottling plant chiefly produces flavored mineral waters in the Mattoni Imuno, Essence, Multi, Black and Cedrata ranges, plus beverages from the Pepsi portfolio and by other licensed brands that previously had to be imported to the Czech Republic from Poland, for example. In this respect, the investment is also a mark of progress in sustainability. 

Besides protecting its springs, the beverage bottler is intent on cutting its emissions. More than 10 years ago, it restored the railroad track originally built solely for the company and in doing so reconnected the Kyselka facility to the Czech railroad network. Since then, up to 80,000 pallets of goods have been transported by freight train a year, with well over 20,000 journeys by truck in total saved as a result.

“We’ve been aiming for full circularity of all of our beverage packaging for a long time now,” says company spokeswoman Lutfia Volfová. “We use returnable glass bottles, for instance, and try to have our PET bottles and beverage cans recycled locally.” 

To this end, the bottler has founded the zálohujme.cz initiative that campaigns for the introduction of a nationwide deposit system. 

“This measure would facilitate and promote container recycling, with the majority of the resources needed for manufacture of the primary raw materials, such as energy and water, and carbon emissions being saved,” Volfová says.

Just like PET, recycled aluminum can also be reused as a material for beverage packaging. 

“Before it can be fed back into the loop, however, we need to ensure an efficient return system,” Volfová says.

In this respect, the initiative still has a way to go. At the moment, in the Czech Republic only three out of 10 cans are collected.

Shared story of success

Mattoni 1873 and KHS have collaborated for more than 30 years, since the Pasquales took the helm at the start of the 1990s. Mattoni 1873 has ordered new equipment from the Dortmund systems supplier, such as a stretch blow molder for the plant in Moravia, Kisters packers in South Bohemia, a CombiKeg line for Poděbradka mineral water from Central Bohemia, and a bottle washing machine for the Pepsi bottling plant in Prague.

Including all additional costs for conversions, expansion of its warehousing capacity and various connections, Mattoni 1873 has spent more than €8.2 million ($8.94 million) on the new system that’s been up and running in three-shift operation since 2023. 

“The market significance in Central Europe and the group’s strong growth require that we further expand and modernize our production capacities,” Pasquale says. “In the past three years we’ve concentrated most heavily on the roots of our company, the Karlovy Vary region and our plant in Kyselka, where the majority of our capital has been invested.”