Problems arising within a bottling line.

Kronseder, H. and Hinterwimmer, P.

Abstract
Because of their careful planning, the majority of high speed bottling lines operate reasonably well, but regrettably they fail to attain the desired efficiency. As individual units, modern bottling machines are, in general, capable of achieving extremely high efficiency. Labelling machines, for example, were once thought of as being the weak link in the line, whereas today the modern labelling machine has become the most reliable. Despite the improvement in design, quality and planning technique, bottle conveyors remain the major problem area affecting efficiency. Unless bottles can be positively conveyed from machine to machine, high efficiency will never be achieved, with the resultant difficulty in justifying the cost of a modern high speed bottling line. Efforts to overcome this problem have evolved the combining of machines to eliminate their linking with conventional conveyors. Such a combined bloc unit intergrating several operations such as filling, closing and labelling, has already been developed, tested and proven in several bottling plants in Germany. Capacities of 800 bottles per minute can be achieved and, based on experience already gained, it is believed that the bloc concept is technically suitable for speeds up to 1,000 bpm while still achieving a degree of efficiency never previously possible.
Keywords: beer bottling equipment filling