Title: ACI SYSTEMS ELIMINATE MOISTURE FOR SWAN BREWERY
The Swan Brewery is one of Western Australia's best known
companies. Though more than 90 breweries have come and gone
in WA, Swan has remained the stalwart of the industry.
With its compressed air systems stretched to their limits,
the Brewery needed to explore alternative drying methods for
its bottling and canning lines.
Rather than installing the extra compressor capacity required,
the company investigated dedicated bottle/can drying systems.
The solution was an ACI 'JetPlate' bottle drying system and
two of the company's can drying tunnels, supplied by ACI's
Australian Agent Dynamic Engineering of Perth.
The JetPlate is installed immediately before the labelling
station and the can driers prior to the ink jet coding operation.
JetPlates deliver air via stepped slots in the face of the
system's opposing plenums, allowing the drier to accommodate
bottles ranging in height from 190mm to 276mm without alteration.
Because no adjustment is involved, there is none of the possible
variations in drying efficiency that could arise with manually
positioned air jets and effective drying is assured.
Complementing the JetPlate is a top drier which ensures all
moisture is removed from recesses under the bottle caps to
prevent the both caps rusting and condensation inside shrink
wrap packaging.
The two can tunnels feature innovative 'Y' shaped slots in
the plenum chambers, developed for maximum drying efficiency,
and easy height adjustment that can be achieved within seconds.
Drying here also avoids condensation inside packaging whilst
also eliminating the risk of stress corrosion.
A novel feature of the Swan installation is that the bottle
and can drying lines share a single blower (ACI's EP10). By
using a 'Y' shaped diverter valve, air flow can be switched
easily between the bottle and can drying lines, according
to production runs.
In addition to these driers, Swan also uses ACI's conventional
Airknives to remove water from cans as they exit a high-volume
pasteuriser before they are channelled into single can feeds
for ink jet coding.
Steve Allison, Packing Technologist, at the Swan Brewery,
Canning Vale plant says "Initially we had some reservations
whether or not there would be enough heat in the system to
achieve effective drying. However, we have found air flow
through the ducting generates enough without adding a secondary
heat source, saving us money."
In 1990, Swan came under the umbrella of the Lion Nathan
group and since then has grown to produce up to 100 million
litres per year in packaged and bulk beer. The equivalent
of 350,000 middies leaves the brewery every day, destined
for he far-flung corners of Australia.
