In addition to statutory warranty requirements, BLEFA has decided to give a 30-year guarantee on all our Kegs from 2013. This covers service life and water tightness of all weld seams, as well as corrosion protection of the keg surface. To ensure the guarantee remains in effect, the kegs must be serviced every 7 years.

The kegs need to be taken out of the logistics chain and made available to the personnel carrying out the servicing.

All kegs have a machine-readable 2D Matrix code, which enables them to be automatically sorted and removed from your logistics chain. Alternatively, you can consult the manufacturer details which should indicate the year 2013 on the relevant BLEFA keg.

On the one hand, the guarantee on kegs bought in 2013 remains in effect, and on the other, the preventive maintenance enables you to avoid costly complaints on the market, loss of reputation among customers and downtimes in your filling plant.

Yes, you can and it makes good sense. There is no guarantee on these kegs, but the argument that preventive maintenance can safeguard against customer complaints is still valid.

Mandatory checks

• 100% visual inspection of welds (outside)
• 100% pressure test to ensure kegs are not leaking (max. 6 bar)
• check the need to straighten top/bottom chimbs
• check the need to straighten the neck

Mandatory actions if needed based on checks

• straighten top/bottom chimbs via an approved process
• straighten the neck via an approved process

Recommended

• spear service incl. exchange of rubber parts (only OEM parts)
• internal inspection to identify beer stone, residues, etc.

Optional

• removal of glue, stickers etc.
• polishing
• dedenting rolling rims
• dedenting bottom dimple
• rebranding etc.

We have an international network of service partners who are authorized to carry out this service and document it using a specially dedicated software. If you normally work with a keg service company which does not belong to our network, it will be possible to authorize this company to carry out the keg service for you. The decisive factors for us are whether the company in question meets our quality standards and is able to document the service on a special iPad based software.

We have partners who can carry out the service at the brewery, on your premises or at any other location with the required infrastructure (water, electricity, compressed air).

For the documentation, a special iPad based software was developed. This is needed to manage the data on each individual keg in our guarantee data base.

Ultimately, the costs depend on a number of different factors, such as whether the service is to be carried out on site, whether freight costs are incurred, what kind of service is actually carried out per keg and also on geographical factors. Servicing a keg in Germany, for instance, would certainly cost more than it would in South America. The final price level lies with the brewery on the one hand and the service partner on the other.

If not all kegs can be made available for servicing in the 7th year, it is possible to have the remainder serviced a year later without losing the guarantee.

Servicing is carried out every 7th year, which means that all kegs purchased in 2013 and serviced in 2019 would be eligible for their next service in 2026.