KHS Innofill Can Filler Financing

Canning is where a lot of juice and functional beverage brands are heading, and the KHS Innofill Can is one of the machines that makes that move credible at production scale. The Innofill Can platform is KHS's rotary can-filling and seaming system, covering still beverages, nitrogenated products, and carbonated applications depending on the valve configuration. For a brand that has validated its product in bottles and is now ready to capture the can segment, or a co-packer adding a can line to serve a growing list of RTD beverage clients, the Innofill Can is a tier-one piece of equipment worth financing properly.

KHS is a German filling technology company (headquartered in Dortmund) with a global installed base across beer, juice, soft drinks, and RTD beverages. The Innofill Can is part of that broader portfolio and benefits from KHS's service network and parts availability across North America and Europe. For a financing lender, that installed-base depth and service infrastructure matters because it supports asset value in the secondary market.

We work with KHS equipment buyers across the beverage sector and have lenders who know the Innofill Can as a collateral asset. Our minimum is $50,000; the Innofill Can installation typically sits above that. Application-only approval up to roughly $400,000, full-doc above that, B and C credit considered, funding in about one to two weeks.

Innofill Can: Platform and Configuration

The KHS Innofill Can uses a rotary filling principle with magnetic flow metering or volumetric filling heads depending on the variant. For still beverages including cold-pressed juices, nut milks, and still functional drinks, the standard fill valve controls the fill level and minimizes dissolved oxygen pickup during the fill event. For carbonated variants, the counter-pressure filling principle keeps CO2 in solution during the fill cycle.

The machine integrates directly with a seamer (the can seamer and the filler are typically supplied and configured together) and feeds downstream to a complete canning line that includes rinsing, labeling or sleeving, date coding, and end-of-line packaging. KHS designs its filling and closing machines to work as a matched pair, which simplifies the line and ensures the fill-to-close cycle does not create quality defects from timing mismatch.

Output speeds vary by model class: smaller Innofill Can configurations run from around 6,000 to 15,000 cans per hour, while full-scale models can reach 90,000 cph or more for high-volume beverage production. Most juice and RTD brands in the mid-tier range are looking at 15,000 to 36,000 cph configurations, which match well with a realistic co-packing business model or a regional brand's production schedule.

Used Innofill Can systems are available through the secondary market and through KHS's pre-owned equipment channel. A used machine in a documented configuration with known cycle history is a financeable asset. Wear items on can fillers include the valves, valve seals, and the seamer tooling, all of which have documented replacement schedules and available parts.

Buyers Who Benefit from Innofill Can Financing

The Innofill Can serves a range of buyer types at different production scales. The financing structure and the documentation we need varies by profile:

• Juice brands moving into cans: Brands with an established bottle or pouch program that want to launch a canned SKU. The existing revenue history is the primary credit story; the can line is a capacity expansion that should pay back against new distribution opened by the can format.
• RTD functional beverage startups: Functional beverage brands often launch in cans from day one because the format is dominant in the RTD functional segment. Startup deals require purchase orders, distribution agreements, or investor backing to underwrite.
• Can co-packers: Co-packers adding can capability to serve a roster of RTD brands benefit from the Innofill Can's ability to handle multiple can sizes without full changeover. Contracted revenue from client brands is the strongest underwriting story for this profile.
• Craft beverage brands crossover: Craft beverage producers adding juice or functional products to their can-filling portfolio sometimes use a shared can line for both their core products and a new juice line. This shared-asset economics can justify the capital investment in an Innofill Can at throughput levels that would not otherwise support the asset cost.

Getting the Innofill Can Deal Done

KHS equipment is typically ordered from the factory on lead times of several months for new machines. The financing should be approved and documented well before the equipment delivery so there is no gap between the vendor requiring payment and the lender funding. Here is the process:

Submit the application with the machine details and your business snapshot. For amounts under $400,000, the application alone is often sufficient to get to a term sheet. Above that, three months of business bank statements and a basic financial summary complete the picture. We present to our financing team in parallel and return competing term sheets rather than a single offer.

Approval typically takes a few business days. Funded deals close in one to two weeks from approval on complete applications. For deposit-draw structures (where the vendor requires a deposit before production), we can sometimes structure the lender to fund the deposit draw rather than requiring you to bridge it with your own cash.

For brands using Section 179 or bonus depreciation to accelerate the tax benefit of a can-line purchase, timing the deal closure in the tax year matters. Our bonus depreciation financing page covers how to structure the purchase to capture the deduction in the year you intend.

Related Financing Paths