Leading US bottled water producer chooses Sacmi’s buffer for preforms and caps
Reduced CO2 emissions with respect to utilisation of already efficient laser-guided vehicles (LGVs), cutting them to a quarter of those emitted by traditional storage systems which use fossil fuels, plus advantages in terms of logistic efficiency and process hygiene. This is Sacmi CPB LINK, the new highly automated dynamic buffer chosen by one of the biggest US bottled water production and marketing players as part of a production plant renewal program in Mexico and the US state of Texas.
The outcome of close collaboration between the three Sacmi Group companies that provide plant engineering solutions to the beverage industry (Sacmi Imola, Sacmi Packaging and Sacmi Filling) and the US giant’s own team, the implemented solution integrates cap and preform production with the bottling line, this providing energy and logistics savings.
With Sacmi CPB LINK, in fact, cap and preform storage and subsequent feeding of the bottling line become a single fully automated, integrated process that lets manufacturers slash their logistics costs, smooth management of production flows and boost hygiene-related bottling process safety thanks to thermal and microbiological conditioning of the buffer (ultraclean environment).
“With CPB LINK”, points out Iacopo Bianconcini, marketing manager of the Group’s Beverage and Closures & Containers Division, “Sacmi has provided the first automatic cap and preform storage magazine to act as a link between the cap and preform production solutions and the integrated stretch-blow moulding and filling lines. The result is the first true, complete beverage production line, integrated in terms of both process synchronisation (thanks to the storage buffer) and equipped to respond to the natural need for bottling line flexibility (for example, frequent line stops for size changeovers and changing seasonal output requirements).”
The system, in fact, allows users to store preforms and caps tidily in stainless steel containers. Further advantages include complete traceability and FIFO management. The SACMI-made vertical magazine is fire-resistant in compliance with the strictest international standards. It can provide storage volumes of up to 20 million preforms and 150 million caps. Sacmi CPB LINK allows storage capacities to be configured according to customer requirements and can be up to 41m long and 14m high.
The result of cost-benefit analysis carried out jointly by team Sacmi and the customer’s own technicians, this investment will provide the American firm (which has been in the industry for over half a century and has, for some years now, expanded operations to cover the sale and marketing of “private label” bottled water) with considerable savings in terms of both CO2 emissions (nearly halved with respect to the current storage system which uses laser-guided vehicles) and in terms of assured product quality thanks to a fully ultra-clean storage process that requires no chemical solvents.
