Efficiency improvements at Edgemill Group with its new bottling and labelling line

Starting out as a retailing and wholesaling business over 40 years ago, the Edgemill Group is now one of the few independent organisations that produces, blends and bottles wines, spirits and liqueurs.

The company is a 100% family-owned business, operating within multiple beverage markets both domestically and internationally. The group is made up of Edgemill, which oversees the domestic wine and spirit sales; AWP, which wholesales dry goods and bulk wine; and AGDA, which looks after the blending, testing, warehousing and contract packaging arm of the business.

Due to the growth of the business, Edgemill Group moved into a state-of-the-art facility in Laverton North in 2011, incorporating two bottling lines, a research and development laboratory, warehousing and offices.

The Edgemill Group has a strong working history with FB*PROPAK, first purchasing a 24-head hand apply rinser, 3x6 head hand fillers and single-head ROPP screw capper in 2003. In 2007, a FB*PROPAK single-head hand feed labeller was added. However, as the business grew, it became clear that a less manual solution was needed.

After 12 months of conversation and of collaboration with FB*PROPAK, Edgemill signed off on a solution - the Monoblock station - that catered to Edgemill’s range of bottling and labelling needs. Once the machine was near completion, the two companies travelled to Italy together for training and sign-off before the equipment was shipped to Australia.

The Monoblock station includes a 12-head automatic rinsing station, a 10-head gravity feed filler, a single-head ROPP screw capper with capabilities to cap three different sizes, one labeller to automatically apply U-shaped labels or tax labels, a hybrid labeller - a single-head rotary labeller that is purpose built to cater to any format, and a semi-auto packer.

Edgemill is planning further expansions in 2014 so it was important that the new line would fit into one end of the company’s current purpose-built bottling hall. This was achieved.

Prior to this new installation, Edgemill was a fully manual operation from rinse through to pack. This format achieved a run efficiency of 9.5 bottles/min and requires six staff members on the line. The new FB*PROPAK line can achieve 25 bottles/min and only requires two staff members, and the line can run anything from 50 mL bottles to 1.5 L bottles. This works out to 47½ cases/h (285 cases/shift x 6 staff) v 125 cases/h (750 cases/shift x 2 staff) - an impressive improvement in efficiency.

FB*PROPAK Technical Engineer Jamey Algie oversaw the project. Algie specialises in bottling line design and full project management including installation and ongoing backup maintenance, entailing both breakdown and preventive maintenance of the bottling line units.

Being contract packers, Edgemill needs to have flexibility and versatility with its bottling and labelling options and has found that FB*PROPAK has delivered this. At the same time, FB*PROPAK has understood that Edgemill Group is a medium-sized business which needs to grow organically and sustainably.