Your contact on this topic

Paul-Uwe Winterhoff
Dairy sales manager/KHS GmbH,
Dortmund, Germany

Phone: +49 231 569-10142
Email: paul.winterhoff@khs.com

Dominique Leroy
Global product account manager for sensitive products/KHS GmbH,
Bad Kreuznach, Germany

Phone: +49 160-90198876
Email: dominique.leroy@khs.com

Thomas Redeker
Dairy sales director/KHS GmbH,
Bad Kreuznach, Germany

Phone: +49 671 852-2066
Email: thomas.redeker@khs.com

Paul-Uwe Winterhoff has always worked in the packaging industry and spent thirteen years in aseptic filling, eight of these as head of electrical and mechanical design engineering and in project coordination. When he came to KHS in 2008, he found himself joining a highly innovative team. “Our creativity has been documented by many awards in the past few years,” he says. “We need these, too, as we’re working on a market that’s constantly changing. Continuous improvement isn’t therefore just a buzzword for us but a fixed feature of our practical day-to-day work.

With so much dynamism in the workplace flexibility is called for. We have to react fast to new trends and with our special dairy team we’re much closer to the market than before,” stresses Dominique Leroy. On the KHS sales team as global product account manager for sensitive products for three years now, he has helped to market the aseptic portfolio. He contributes twenty years of experience as a sales and marketing manager in thermoforming, filling, and sealing machines with high standards of hygiene. While working for his previous employers in France, Oystar Erca Formseal, and Mecapack, he sold various special-requirement machines, such as FDA-approved aseptic fillers for cream desserts based on soy milk destined for export to the American market.

International experience

The third man in the trio is Thomas Redeker who has worked in the beverage and food industry for over thirty-five years, two thirds of these in sales – primarily in the packaging industry and as senior key account manager for the dairy sector. One of the market launches he was globally responsible for was of the first aseptic carton bottle in the world for Tetra Pak. As an internationally experienced salesman and long-standing key account manager, for instance for the Müller company, together with his colleagues he wishes to convince customers that they are buying one of the safest and most economical filling systems on the market when they invest in KHS plant technology. “We speak the language of the dairies and understand their needs and requirements. Our focus is on topics such as TCO, high quality, and our various services,” explains Redeker.

What does the dairy team offer dairies specifically? “Our engineering is precisely tailored to our customers’ requirements – from the single machine to the turnkey line,” promises Winterhoff. “From fresh milk to UHT, from mixed milk beverages to drinkable yogurt with or without fruit chunks or fibers, we can fill between 6,000 and 36,000 bottles per hour – from ultraclean to cold aseptic.”

Ideal conditions

“KHS uses its expertise from the full spectrum of beverages to develop new systems especially for dairy products,” emphasizes Leroy, quoting the following example. “Lightweighting is a topic which is of growing importance to dairies. Here, we can score with the results from our Bottles & ShapesTM program.” For instance, the 1-liter bottle recently developed by KHS, with a thread diameter of 32 millimeters, weighs just 20 grams – 2 grams less than other bottles common to the market. This development recently won KHS the World Beverage Innovation Award from British publisher FoodBev Media in two categories. “Another example is the Plasmax FreshSafe PET® process,” Winterhoff adds. “An ultra-thin glass coating on the inside of the bottle reliably prevents oxygen from penetrating the product and ensures that oxygen-sensitive products are not damaged or affected.”

One can clearly see that the three men are looking forward to their new joint task. The conditions are definitely right, believes Redeker. “We’re a great team of genial colleagues. We’re all qualified experts in the dairy trade but because each of us has his own particular field of expertise, we complement each other perfectly.” Their specific knowledge is as varied as their personal relationship with the product itself; sports enthusiast Thomas Redeker sees it first and foremost as a natural, healthy food, Frenchman Dominique Leroy loves his fruit yogurt and Paul-Uwe Winterhoff wouldn’t want to be without the milk in his coffee ...

“We speak the language of the dairies and understand their needs and requirements.”

Thomas Redeker,
Dairy-Team, KHS GmbH