Worldwide, sparkling wine is expected to grow by 54 milion litters during the period 2019 – 2023 with a CAGR of 2% The whole sparkling wine sector production has been grown during these last 5 years by an average of 15% in the most important wine regions which are Italy, France, Spain and Germany. The champagne industry is a luxury industry, and as such aesthetic appearance is of high value. Stored wine bottles are prone to defacements like iridescence, lime scales, or rust that occur on the surface of bottles during the handling and the characteristically long storage. These defacements affect some bottles of every matured champagne batch, which may provoke the loss of 10-20% of the bottle productions.
PRIMA has developed an automated cleaning system that can clean and polish such vast volumes of filled champagne bottles, eliminating the need for manual polishing (and repetitive activity which is not 100% efficient and uses large water quantities) while observing strictly the Food Standards Agency (FSA) regulations, and involving no chemicals. This would ultimately improve the quality of the champagne in terms of both aesthetics and wine properties.