The company is supplying an All In One filler with a filling capacity of 4,000 bottles and cans per hour for East Coast Brewing Company.
Plastic screw caps
East Coast Brewing Company has chosen the All In One filler with 16 grippers, 16 volumetric filling valves and two capping/seaming turrets: The first turret combines crown corks and different lid sizes of cans and the second turret is designed for aluminum and plastic screw caps.
The order also includes a mixer and flash pasteurizer, which will be installed at the same time as the filler next year.
Stanko Zver, MD/co-founder, GEA VIPOLL, said the all in one is flexible and saves time when filling and changing formats.
“The decision was all the easier because East Coast Brewing Company has already had experience with our brewery colleagues in Kitzingen,” he said.
East Coast Brewing Company is one of South Africa's emerging craft breweries and in 2017 equipped its brewery with a 50 hectoliter GEA Craft Star brewhouse.
Rocco Antonio Fontana, third-generation brewer and beverage producer, wants to fill not only craft beer at 2°C, but carbonated soft drinks at 20°C and still water.
”The All In One is the third machine we have purchased from GEA, and we are excited to have the line commissioned early next year,” he said.
“We produce a variety of products both in-house and offer a specialized contract packing service that so needed an all-rounder that makes financial sense in terms of our capacities. This is our vision of smart, lean technologies.”
Can lids
Customers in the craft secto are looking for flexible technology to switch to different container formats within a few minutes.
The All In One rinser for example, is equipped with universal grippers and the filler with electro-pneumatic filling valves that do not need changing to run bottles and cans with different neck sizes.
The twin head capper, in which every second seaming head is activated for can lids and crown caps on one turret and an additional turret for metal (MCA) and plastic (PCO) caps, have individual cap feed systems.
The can seamer and crown cap heads are servo-driven. In contrast to conventional systems, the All In One system has minimal product losses due to the capping/seaming system.
In total, format and product changes on the filling block take less than 20 minutes.
