The firm made a successful repair to its amber furnace in December 2011 and is planning a complete rebuild of its white flint furnace in July.
New automatic inspection equipment is also being installed at Beatson Clark which will further improve the quality of the products and improve traceability. The company has already installed new vision-based inspection equipment with sidewall, base and top stress detection on four lines, and installation on the other four lines will be complete by early next year.
Beatson Clark is also replacing M machines on all lines with the latest Servo-driven multi-inspection machine which inspects the neck of the bottle, wall thickness and ovality of the glass.
All this new equipment can read dot coding, which will enable additional automated inspection and improve traceability of the product. The company plans to add dot coding to all its products to take advantage of this facility.
Beatson Clark will also be upgrading its metal detectors across all lines later this year. As well as detecting metal in the product the new equipment will also isolate affected products and remove them from the waste products that go for recycling.
Beatson Clark, MD, Tony McLoughlin said the £10m investment is an important part of the company’s long-term strategy for growth. “We’re a long-established business but we never stand still,” he said. “We are always thinking about how we can improve our products and processes and constantly looking for new ways to provide an even better and more flexible service to our customers.
“The fact that we are making such a significant investment in our plant in South Yorkshire is great news for the region and an indication that we see growth in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical sectors over the next 12 -18 months.”
Beatson Clark is also investing in new design technology. The company has updated its CAD (Computer-Aided Design) system to the latest 3D visualisation software.
McLoughlin said: “Using this software during the new product development process, our design team we will be able to provide customers with real-time images of what the end product will actually look like. The animation of the 3D visualisation can be turned 360° on the screen, showing customers what the size, shape, colour and embossing details would actually look like, rather than using an outline drawing that takes time to amend and makes it difficult for customers to properly visualise the product.”
Source: Beatson Clark
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