Innovative bottling line for dairy products

Arla Foods UK, Leeds, England, processing 2.3 billion litres of milk a year, is the biggest British producer of fresh milk. With its innovative products, plus numerous new and enhanced packaging variants, Arla is a trend-setting player on the British market. For its bottling operations at the greenfield Stourton Dairy project, Arla ordered four lines from Krones, dedicated to the 1-pint (0.568 l), 2-pint (1.136 l), 4-pint (2.27 l) and 6-pint (3.408 l) HDPE bottles. As a complete-system vendor, Krones was given turnkey responsibility by Arla Foods for the filling operation, so that the project could be implemented without any interfaces.

• Contiroll and Sleevematic labellers
  Before the HDPE bottles are fed into the fillers, they are passed through the Contiroll wrap-around labeller, which dresses them in reel-fed labels: a high-precision cutting device cuts the labels at the preprogrammed position. The economical glue station can process both hotmelt and cold glue. For handling the 2-litre and 284-ml bottles, prelabelling with shrink-sleeves is performed using a Sleevematic labeller.
• Checkmat inspection unit
  Before the closures are passed to the capper, a Checkmat inspection unit monitors them for alignment, correct colour and the presence of the aluminium seal.
  The coding imprinted after capping, plus correct application of the closure, are monitored using another Checkmat. Bottles tagged as defective are given a different code and rejected.
• Sensometic VPGW weighing filler
  The distinctive features of the VPGW weighing filler are the valve and vessel design, the weighing cell table and the front table with its collecting channel. The weighing cell table features an open construction concept with a tilted surface. The enclosure with its transparent doors forms a large cleanroom fitted with HEPA filters. Before the bottles enter the filler, they are prepared for the filling operation by being blown out with sterile air, which is then vacuum-extracted.
• Roof Divider linear distributor
  The Roof Dividerdistributor integrated in the SynCo transport system guides the bottles to two packers as well as rejecting the containers tagged as defective in the Checkmat onto a third conveyor.
• Variopac packer
  For handling the 284-ml bottles, a Variopac non-returnables packer is used, creating 6-, 12- or 24-bottle shrink-packs.
• Line management system LMS and Line Documentation System LDS
  These software packages, which enable production batches to be changed immediately, have been developed specifically for the food and beverage industries. Besides significantly expanding the lines’ capacities, these software tools also constitute a fundamental precondition for the operations of the facility in Stourton, assuring as they do full-coverage traceability of the products involved.