ACI Bottle Dryer ensures success for CCE's new bottle and 'ROSO' labelling

In the fast moving FMCG market product awareness is king. A differentiating factor enhances that customer awareness helping to reinforce the product’s visibility.

Awareness is achieved, maintained and/or boosted through product development and innovation. Frequently, it involves a make-over of the product’s packaging and presentation.

One such example is the new contoured bottle introduced recently for 1 litre and 1.25 litre bottles of Schweppes’ tonic water, Russian, Ginger Ale and other sparkling mixers bottled at Coca-Cola Enterprises’ (CCE) Wakefield bottling plant, where an Air Control Industries (ACI) drying system is playing an important role in helping the company meet its labelling objectives.

As with everything new, such changes place demands on the company. In this case, a new labelling process was required to cope with the new bottle shape.

Originally, with straight wall bottles, conventional wrap-around plastic labels were used but these were not compatible with the new bottle configuration so different options had to be explored by CCE and Krones UK, supplier of the bottling line.

Shrinkable plastic sleeves were an obvious option, but system complexity and material costs quickly eliminated them. However, another plastic shrinkable labelling system, ROSO (Roll-on Shrink-on), did provide the solution.

Merits of the ROSO system included more acceptable materials costs and, being a wrap around labelling technique, and an application system that could be employed for both the ROSO labels and standard plastic labels for straight walled bottles during different product runs.

As well as providing the ideal labelling solution for the new contoured bottles, the ROSO label also imposed its own demands, in particular an absolutely dry bottle to ensure blemish free application.

In addition to the obvious one of being effective in achieving the required drying standards, criteria for the appropriate drying system included reliability and ease of maintenance to ensure high levels of availability to minimize downtime and loss of production, plus flexibility to permit handling of different bottle sizes. The need to fulfil all these demands is reinforced by the fact Wakefield is CCE’s largest bottling plant in the world.

“Bottle drying might appear to be a simple process but it is essential that it must be done effectively if high-quality labelling is to be achieved”, commented Alan Ellis, Senior Project Manager, Coca-Cola Enterprises. “The quality of labelling reflects upon the product, so it is important to ensure that the highest standards are achieved, and effective consistent drying is plays a major part in accomplishing this”.

Three companies were asked to make presentations so that a CCE/Krones evaluation team could assess their respective drying systems on the bases of design, ease of use, ease of changeover between label runs and support, etc. From these three companies, ACI of Chard was selected to carry out witnessed tests in its laboratory/test facility. Suitably impressed, CCE asked ACI to install its DRI-Line system at Wakefield for a four week evaluation period. Those trials were completed in May 2007 and the ACI DRI-Line system is continuing to meet successfully all the drying demands of CCE.

“The ACI DRI-Line has matched up to all our demands,” said David Hunt, Product Specialist, Krones UK. “It dries the bottles effectively, can handle both the new and old bottle designs with no adjustment and it is extremely reliable thanks to its simple yet effective design.”

Key to the success of the ACI DRI-Line bottle dryer is its unique JetPlate system.

JetPlates are based around two facing plenums. These plenums have front panels with air delivery slots that step downwards progressively to drive water both down and off bottles as they pass between them.

This design, because the plenums actually replace conveyor guide rail, allows high volumes of air to be delivered at close proximity to the bottles and, consequently, act more effectively to achieve more efficient drying.

The reliability and ease of use of the ACI JetPlate technology stem from just one connection from a single blower to each of the plenums so minimal risk of failure whilst its slotted facing plates are designed to deliver air effectively – without adjustment - whatever the bottle size/shape – at CCE’s Wakefield plant 1 and 1.25 litres contoured bottles, and 1.5, 2 and 3 litres straight walled bottles.

The JetPlates are housed in a self-contained, noise attenuated enclosure with the blower located in the base of the unit. Its footprint requirement is just 2423 x 980 mm with a height of 2183mm.