The installation uses hot water from the compression process, together with latent heat from the automated plant’s boilers and refrigeration units to pre-heat its CIP water that’s used to clean and sterilise the product lines and bulk storage tanks after they have been emptied during the bottling procedure.
Each of the two high-speed bottling lines is capable of producing over half a million bottles of wine a day running at the rate of 400 bottles per minute and totalling 200 million bottles per year.
In addition, there are three bag-in-box lines producing 45 boxes per minute in various volume formats, from 2.25-litre to 10-litre.
Overall, Accolade Wines fills the equivalent of 21 million nine-litre cases of wine each year, 18 million of which are for the company’s own brands such as Hardy’s and Echo Falls, with an additional three million for producers and retailers, including a leading supermarket’s own-label products.
Compressed air is an essential part of the plant control pneumatics involved in the bottling line filling operations, and this is met by an Atlas Copco compressed air installation comprising two water-cooled ZR90 VSD oil-free rotary screw compressors, together with a fixed-speed ZR75 machine.
Julian Rainbow, the plant’s utilities & process engineering manager, said: “It was designed from the outset to minimise energy usage by employing the best available techniques, which is why we chose Atlas Copco ZR oil-free compressors. What’s more, the service team is very knowledgeable and the support we have received from them has been outstanding.”
Source: Accolade Wines
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