Coopers Brewery Bottle Filling Line, Adelaide, Australia

Coopers Brewery, based in Regency Park, Adelaide, Australia and one of the world's market leaders in the beverage industry, installed a new bottle filler in August 2005 as part of its A$7m expansion programme. The expansion was initiated in December 2004 and was completed by the end of 2005. The expansion was intended to meet the growing demand for Coopers beers across Australia and overseas; the old filling line could not match the required production, so it was replaced at a cost of A$3.6m.

AUTOMATIC CLEANING AND BOTTLE FILLING MACHINE

Coopers imported the new bottle filler from Germany's KHS Till, a major provider of kegging technology the world over. The new KHS Transomat 5/1 Duo keg filler with direct flow control has replaced a single lane KHS Transomatic 4/2 filler. The newly developed Transomat 5/1 Duo has capacity up to 160 keg/hr, fully automatic cleaning and filling machine. Each lane is fitted with three active cleaning stations, one caustic soaking station, one filling station, control box and keg retainers.

The machine consists of an easily accessible and hygienically designed stainless steel frame. Most importantly, the automatic filling line requires only minimal operator intervention.

An ABB robot, programmed to unload empty kegs and place them onto the conveyor leading to the cleaner and filler, was also added. The robot lifts the filled 50l kegs from the line and stacks them on pallets for easy movement around the warehouse.

A special automatic capping device designed within Coopers places a plastic cap on each filled keg before it is removed from the line. The changes enable the keg line to be operated remotely and overseen by lager cellar operators via the site-wide SCADA system as well as closed-circuit television.

SCADA SYSTEM ALLOWS FOR REAL-TIME ANALYSIS

SCADA was developed by Camms, to deliver real-time production performance analysis through Internet-based software to the Coopers teams managing the production process. Its powerful data analysis capabilities provide management with immediate performance variation analysis to ensure their production processes are tuned to provide efficient production and the highest levels of product quality.

This replaces manual analysis systems and provides a single, consolidated view of production performance with superior data accuracy and integrity. The automation also reduced staffing levels from the earlier two to one.

INCREASING BOTTLING CAPACITY

The previous bottling machine had a maximum capacity of 840 bottles per minute (bpm), and this was moved to Regency Park from the old brewery at Leabrook. The new bottle filler has a maximum capacity of 160 kegs/hr, more than double the capacity of the old line of 60 kegs/hr. Initially, it run at 120 kegs/hr due to limitations of a pre-washer, but this has still enabled Coopers to reduce keg filling operations from two shifts per day to one.

NEW EXPANSION IN 2007

In March 2007 Coopers started work on a A$10.5m programme to boost capacity at its brewery in Adelaide.

Two 15t fermenters (each worth A$1m) were installed in August 2007, increasing the total number to 20.

Each fermenter holds approximately 170,000l of beer, the equivalent of around 18,000 cartons. Work on installing a new labeller started in September 2007 (labeller supplied by KHS in Germany). The labeller will enable Coopers to boost the speed of its bottling line from around 1,000 bottles a minute to 1,200 bottles per minute.

Warehouse expansion started in May 2007 and involved extending it approximately 51m towards South Road. The project will add 7,000m² of storage space. The project will also involve moving some car park spaces and landscaping the site.

By November 2007 the brewery will also get 8,500 new beer kegs (from a manufacturer in Belgium), valued at A$1.5m. This will increase Coopers keg count to 100,000.