PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2016

LABELLING 64 PET planet Insider Vol. 17 No. 10/16 www.petpla.net Poland’s most popular mineral water gains a new labeller Labelled as required When Poland’s biggest brand of mineral water was look- ing for a multifunctional labelling machine which is easy to operate and meets all quality criteria, they decided on the Innoket Neo from the KHS Group. A total of three machines in this new series are in service at Nałęczów in Poland. One of the main reasons for the bottler investing in this particu- lar piece of equipment was its free-standing labelling sta- tion concept which is claimed to give the operator optimum access and a high level of safety. Cisowianka is a natural min- eral water which is filled directly at source not far from the Polish town of Nałęczów near Lublin. The region’s extraordinary microclimate makes it a famous spa, its excellent air quality primarily valued by people with cardio- vascular disorders who come here to take a cure. The filler of this special water, ZL Nałęczów Zdrój, runs one of the most technically modern min- eral water bottling plants in Europe. Founded in 1979 in Drzewce very close to Nałęczów, it has been draw- ing its water from a source about 100m below the ground for over 35 years. The company is proud of its high standards of quality and safety; it does not change the natural fea- tures of its water in any way. Outside Poland premium brand Perlage is the best-known Nałęczów water, filled into dark-blue bottles and exported to restaurateurs in many countries in Europe, America and Asia. One of the special features of the equipment is the application of a self- adhesive shoulder label to the bottles. Downtimes during reel changeovers or faults are prevented by redundant labelling units, thus ensuring machine availability. For maximum bottle pro- tection the machine does without the otherwise usual, abrupt bottle flow- gate; instead, the bottle flow is very gently moved through a feed screw which is driven by servomotors. The customer uses the Innoket Neo to label Poland’s leading Ciso- wianka mineral water brand in three varieties: still, medium and sparkling. On average 450,000 bottles are pro- cessed per day – which is well below the machine’s maximum output, as Kamil Banaśkiewicz, technical project coordinator at ZL Nałęczów Zdrój, emphasises: “We fill several hun- dred million bottles per year here at our plant, with our KHS labeller one of the most reliable machines in our production shop.” The machine’s use for these three concrete variants of mineral water is based on the specific requirements of the connected lines: the container material, the number of labels per bottle and the efficiency. The Innoket Neo series is of course also suitable for any other label- ling task and filling line, so that the customer is currently talking about a further project. The variety of contain- ers processed by the Polish bottler is infinitely larger; throughout its entire portfolio the sizes of container vary from 0.3 to 1.5l. There are all types of glass and PET container and can, from the classic PET bottle to the pre- mium glass bottle. It is thus obvious why great attention is paid to flexibil- ity with each new investment in plant engineering. Format changeovers made easy “For us, both the quality at KHS and the after-sales service were of equal importance,” says Banaśkiewicz. The KHS Innoket Neo also had the client convinced with its clever details. For format changeo- Labels waiting for use Combination of cold glue and self-adhesive labelling When it came to packaging its nat- ural commodity, the company did not want to make do with the usual stand- ards and began looking for a specific system. It soon found that the KHS Innoket Neo series best satisfied its labelling requirements. Available in six different sizes, it caters for a number of different labelling processes and capacity ranges. In Nałęczów the cus- tomer opted for a combination of cold glue and self-adhesive labelling, with the basic dressing consisting of paper labels for the front and back of the PET bottles. On this count the Innoket Neo is convincing with its rotating glue pallets which, together with other innovations, are intended to permit long labelling station maintenance intervals of up to 20,000 hours. This is equivalent to three to four years in three-shift operation.