Sidel has worked with Malta’s sole licensed bottler of Coca-Cola products to add new technology to an existing line with minimum disruption to the output.
The company installed a new Rollquattro roll-fed labelling machine in just five days, after bottler General Soft Drinks had disregarded the option of retrofitting an existing roll-fed labeller.
General Soft Drinks technical manager Brian Galea said: “With the high season about to start, we consulted Sidel – originally to have our existing Rollquattro roll-fed labeller retrofitted with all the relevant upgrades. Sidel undertook a careful evaluation of the whole situation on our behalf. When they presented the results of this thorough analysis and the comparable improvements we would likely be faced with by investing in the new machine, we quickly saw the value and sense of the option that they were suggesting, particularly when we realised the potential for installing it in such a short timeframe.”
The soft drinks producer is run on measurable performance indicators that are regularly monitored to ensure every aspect of production is kept competitive and profitable, as a result of the country’s highly fragmented bottled mineral water category. This naturally includes the performance of any labelling equipment involved in the process, Sidel said.
The new labeller has a potential output rate of up to 25,000 bottles per hour and makes use of the same changeover parts as the previous model, contributing to the reduction in the overall cost of the investment.
The ergonomic linear design of the new Rollquattro provides control of all labelling processes and allows for simpler maintenance procedures. Modules can be removed from the station and worked on separately. Reduced wearing between the glue-vacuum-drum-cutter roller and the lack of lubrication decreases the need for maintenance. The glue tank, located under the machine base, can be easily and safely accessed by the operator and the vacuum prevents labels from entering the glue roller area to reduce the need for cleaning.
Galea continued: “With the new machine fitted within a matter of days – and Customer Acceptance Validation reached in under three weeks as we had requested – we were able to tackle production for our high season with even greater labelling efficiency. At the same time, we have optimised the TCO [total cost of ownership] of labelling PET bottles on the line.
“GSD production is changed roughly three times every day. So production flexibility in terms of changeover of materials, formats and labels, is essential to us. With a compact footprint, the new Rollquattro linear station design makes access to machine modules easy, thereby making changeovers in format faster. With adjustments for both bottle and label configurations made via the human machine interface (HMI), we now find that we can carry out changeovers within only thirty minutes.”
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