US craft brewer automates bottle packaging process

The Fort Collins Brewery in Colorado, US, produces a full line of handcrafted beers, including year-round brews and specialty beers. To keep up with demand, the brewery upgraded its facility with a range of machinery, including packaging equipment from Pearson Packaging Systems.

Pearson installed a bottle packaging line for the brewery, supplying a ‘Box Shop’ solution including a basket erector, multipacker and case erector.

“Before we had the Pearson equipment, we erected the baskets by hand. This involved several hours of work manually opening the carrier, stacking them on tables before we could start operation,” said Tom Peters, founder of Fort Collins Brewery.

Pearson supplied a BE60 basket erector that can erect 4-, 6- and 8-pack baskets at a speed of up to 60/min. The flat baskets are selected from a magazine, opened and locked into place. The baskets are then passed to the Pearson MP35 Adjustable Multipacker that loads the baskets into the empty RSCs (regular slotted cases) at speeds of up to 30 cases/min. The MP35 can be configured for either inline or cross-flow feed of baskets into cases.

The MP35 is supplied erected cases by a Pearson CE25 case erector that erects the RSCs and bottom seals them with pressure-sensitive tape or hot-melt adhesive.

“I estimate that we have increased our output by about 20% and the machines are capable of running at double the speed, so they will support our future growth,” said Peters.