New blower-powered bottle drying systems cope with increased production

The Problem

In the early 1990’s, The Woodchuck Cidery started by making just small batches of product. Many of the production tasks were done by hand, including topping out the bottles with a turkey baster, applying labels and filling the kegs.  As the company has grown more emphasis has been placed on increasing product quality, improving label quality and reducing reject rates which had been as high as 50%. An identified problem area was the process of bottle drying.

Line Requirements:

Throughput Speeds: 36,000bph
Glass Bottle sizes: 12oz and 22oz bottles

The Solution

The bottle drying system, supplied by ACI’s US Subsidiary (ACI Inc), is an ‘EL’ DRI-Line Series configuration, fitted with Jetplates. These are complemented by pairs of airknives and adjustable air delivery nozzles to provide detail cap and neck drying to prevent moisture retention under the crown tops and ensure secure adhesion of neck labels.

The Outcome

The ability of the ACI system has reduced instances of coding illegibility from 30% down to 3% and more accurate label placing, with no defects jumping from 50% up to 99.9%. In addition, the Jetplates require minimal adjustment for different bottle sizes permitting rapid line change overs from one product to another.

“We needed a new bottle drying system that could cope with our increased production. As well as coping with our higher production levels, the ACI system is more effective than our previous systems because coding and labeling standards have improved significantly.” Russ Beatty, Quality Manager, Woodchuck Cider.

 

Visit the Woodchuck Cider website

Solutions For Packaging & Labelling

Our range of bottle and can drying systems helps to ensure that today’s ground breaking labelling and packaging technology is not compromised by any surface water used in the packaging process.