Amcor Wine Bottle Manufacturing Plant, Gawler, Adelaide, Australia

The Amcor packaging group announced in March 2003 that it would be expanding its wine bottle manufacturing plant at Gawler, Adelaide, Australia. The AU$125 million expansion will increase production capacity through the construction of a second glass furnace. The proposed development will see the Gawler plant raise its production capacity from 200 million to 400 million wine bottles a year.

The 50ha site, when finally completed, will have two furnaces, two IS glassmaking machines, two lehrs (kilns) for cooling bottles, four inspection loops, a packaging line and equipment. The capital expenditure for the complete development is AU$220 million. With the first phase already completed, the plant is expected to be running at full capacity by 2007, which will equate to sales of around AU$80 million a year.

WINE BOTTLE PRODUCTION IN THE BAROSSA VALLEY

Located at Gawler, South Australia, the Amcor plant is just 15 minutes from the wine region of the Barossa Valley. The new furnace development is underpinned by long-term supply agreements, increased export sales and strong industry support.

Amcor currently supplies bottles to all of the major wine groups, who between them are responsible for more than 90% of all the wine produced in Australia. As one of the fastest growing industries in Australia, with 26% export growth last year, Amcor will be well positioned to supply a range of different bottle shapes and colours to meet this increase in demand.

INITIAL PLANT CONSTRUCTION

Leighton Holdings performed the initial stage of the bottle making plant construction in partnership with the German technology supplier Heye-Glas. It included the 32,000m² manufacturing facility, an 18,000m² warehouse, support workshops and an office complex.

As the lead contractors, Leighton purchased the land and was the key player in the Gawler development. The company also sourced the contractors, awarding the contract for the electrical works to Nilsen Electrical Contracting. Nilsen used PDL Matrix switches and socket outlets throughout the complex supplied by local electrical wholesaler Lawrence & Hanson.

Production at Gawler started in July 2002, and the plant is currently producing 600,000 bottles per day.

NEW GLASS FURNACE

Leighton has subsequently been awarded the contract for the construction of the new glassmaking furnace in a deal worth AU$115 million. Construction work has already commenced on this second phase, with Amcor, Leighton and Heye-Glas in the process of reviewing the technical aspects of the project.

The melting furnace will have a capacity of 450t per day and will feed two production lines, each equipped with a Heye-Glas 16 IS machine. Each production line will be installed with two inspection loops and one palletiser feeding into a single automatic shrink wrapper.

GLASS MAKING PROCESS

The production process uses gas-fired melting furnaces with supplementary electrical heating. The raw materials used in the product include glassmaking sand (silica), soda ash (sodium carbonate), limestone (calcium carbonate), dolomite (calcium/magnesium carbonate), feldspar (a silicate mineral), cullet (crushed, recycled glass) and minor amounts of colourants (such as iron oxide), as well as tin chloride and plastic emulsion for the treatment of the bottles’ surfaces. Most of these raw materials will be sourced from within South Australia.

The raw materials are melted together in the furnace, after which blobs of molten glass are fed into the bottle making machines. They are then shaped into bottles in moulds by using compressed air that is blown into the blob to form the required shape. The bottles are then cooled in the lehrs under controlled conditions and packaged, ready for distribution to customers. The Gawler facility is designed to operate on a continual basis, manufacturing glass bottles round the clock, seven days a week.

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