Packaging machinery chosen for brewery

OCME has completed the installation and commissioning of its Vega and Altair packaging machines for the Bluetongue Brewery that was recently opened in Warnervale, approximately 95 km north of Sydney.

Pacific Beverages, a joint venture between SABMiller and Coca-Cola Amatil, took 18 months to construct the Bluetongue Brewery that uses energy-efficient technology and machinery. The brewery has an initial annual capacity of 50 million L, with an output of 48,000 bottles/h, but with plans to expand production to 100 million L/year within the next five years.

The site will produce Australian brands such as Bluetongue and Bondi Blonde, in addition to SABMiller’s international brands Peroni, Azzurro, Peroni Leggera, Miller Genuine Draft and Grolsch.

OCME has installed a Vega N80/2 Shrink Wrapper and an Altair N40 Wrap-Around Case Packer at the brewery.

The case packer can process 40 cases/min and uses an electronic finger container format selection system. Equipped with a high-capacity, precision carton blanks feeder magazine, it is designed to pack a wide range of containers and to handle fragile items such as glass bottles, avoiding breakages or damage to product labels.

The installed shrink wrapper machine has an output of 80 cycles/min processing film-only multipacks and can work as a single or dual track configuration based on the bundle format and the product that is being processed.