High-speed line for Irish Cider

Magners Irish Cider is a byword. Made in Ireland by Bulmers Ltd. of Clonmel, it’s a product that enjoys steadily increasing popularity. In order to keep pace with demand, the bottling capacities have been continually upsized. Following a 45,000-bph line installed by Krones back in 2002, in 2006 Bulmers Ltd. ordered another line rated at 62,000 bph for the 330-ml long-neck bottle. After this line had been commissioned, and in response to the brand’s continuingly successful performance on the market, Bulmers placed an order with Krones for two more identical lines, which were commissioned in 2007. To enable a wider diversity of bottles to be handled on these lines, the filler and the rinser installed are larger-sized models.

This means that now three well-nigh identical lines are each equipped with the following machines:

• Bulk glass sweep-off depalletiser Pressant Universal 1A
  The single-column bulk-glass depalletiser, with its frequency-controlled drives, is exceptionally gentle on the bottles. The containers are swept off at high level onto a container discharge table.
  
• Linatronic empty-bottle inspector
  With a high level of detection accuracy, the camera system of the inline inspector monitors the bottles’ base, the neck finish, the sidewall and residual liquid. A Flexipush rejection unit immediately downstream removes any bottles tagged as defective before they can enter the filler.
  
• Contiflow beverage mixing system
  Flexibility in blending the beverage components ranks among the salient features of the Contiflow mixer. With a steplessly adjustable output ranging from 33 to 100 %, the filler has the requisite flexibility for accepting the right quantities to suit the particular production schedule involved. The integrated circulation system ensures continuously uniform product quality.
  
• Rinser-filler Bloc
  A single-channel Variojet rinser is used to rinse out the new glass bottles, cleaning them with ozonised water. In the Mecafill VKPV-CF filler, an electro-pneumatically controller counter-pressure design, pre-evacuation before the bottles are filled creates a low-oxygen atmosphere inside them. Moreover, a correction step enables uniformly precise fill quantities to be assured. Directly downstream, the Krones KK crowner applies the closures.
  
• Checkmat FM-K fill level inspector
  This compactly dimensioned inspection unit operates using a camera system featuring an infrared bridge, for detecting over- and underfills, plus incorrectly crowned or closureless bottles.
  
• Multimatic labeller
  The high-precision labeller operates with two cold-glue stations and excels in terms of maximised labelling accuracy and low glue consumption. Automatic magazine loading cuts the operator workload, providing as it does a supply of 40,000 labels per station on the machine, obviating the need for continually topping up with labels.
  
• SynCo container transport
  Individually combined modules in the machine’s infeed and discharge form a customised line layout. Line distributors and buffering systems ensure a high production output.
  
• Line documentation system LDS and maintenance software package SIPS
  The integrated LDS IT system excels in terms of transparency and centralised storage of all production data. In addition, thanks to the SIPS maintenance module, Bulmers gains time advantages in its maintenance operations thanks to automatically generated scheduling and stipulations for maintenance and servicing work.