Alfa Laval Clariot prevents pump failure at Britvic

Alfa Laval Clariot detects pump failure in advance at Britvic plant

Alfa Laval's AI-based condition monitoring solution Clariot caught abnormal operation in a critical pump at Britvic's Rugby plant before failure, preventing six hours of unplanned downtime and the loss of 288,000 bottles of product.

Pompa Vana Published: 1 October 2026 12:28 · 2 min read

Contents

Hundreds of pumps support 24/7 production
One alert, a 45-minute planned repair
Sensors, AI analytics and secure connectivity

Britvic, one of the UK’s leading soft drinks producers, detected a problem in a critical pump at its Rugby production plant before a failure occurred, thanks to Alfa Laval’s AI-based condition monitoring solution Clariot. According to a case study shared by Alfa Laval, the early intervention prevented six hours of unplanned downtime, the loss of around 288,000 bottles of product and the waste of 2,000 litres of cleaning water.

Hundreds of pumps support 24/7 production

At Britvic’s Rugby factory, continuous production across many beverage lines relies on hundreds of pumps. In such a setup, the unexpected failure of a single pump can mean production stoppage, product loss and additional cleaning cycles. Alfa Laval points out that unplanned downtime is a significant hidden cost in hygienic process industries such as food, beverage, dairy and pharmaceuticals, while many manufacturers still rely on periodic inspections or reactive maintenance after failure.

One alert, a 45-minute planned repair

A few months after the system was commissioned, Clariot detected abnormal operation in a critical pump and alerted the maintenance team. The team completed the repair in around 45 minutes during a planned production stop. Chris Heslop, Engineering Specialist at Britvic’s Rugby site, said that a single alert had paid back the investment in condition monitoring.

Sensors, AI analytics and secure connectivity

Clariot, a condition monitoring platform developed for hygienic process industries, continuously monitors pumps and other rotating equipment, providing 24/7 analysis, fault diagnosis and alerts. According to Alfa Laval, the solution draws on experience from more than 3,000 condition monitoring installations worldwide and can distinguish between problems caused by process conditions, installation errors and mechanical wear. The system operates independently of business-critical infrastructure, is compatible with most pump brands and can be scaled across a line, a site or global operations.

Torsten Pedersen, Commercial Director for Condition Monitoring at Alfa Laval Flow Equipment, emphasised that the link between uptime and sustainability is growing stronger and that condition monitoring and predictive maintenance have become standard practice in modern manufacturing.