Bacardi-Martini: fewer bottling lines, greater productivity

Bacardi-Martini prepares and bottles vodka, tequila, liqueurs and vermouths in Beaucaire, southern France. Twenty different products and 24 glass bottle formats, from 200 mL to 2 L, are processed at the site. They engaged Gebo Cermex to assist with the establishment of new lines and to improve productivity.

Two high-performance lines instead of six lines for increased productivity

After study, the solution proposed by the Gebo Cermex team made it possible to switch from six to two lines, with a high-speed line for large production runs and a high-flexibility line for small and medium-sized ones. A two-thirds reduction in the number of lines was accompanied by an increase in the number of bottles produced per minute on the site.

Olivier Goffin, Director of the Beer, Wine and Spirits market for Gebo Cermex, says: “We worked on optimising the efficiency and reliability of the site while reducing the overall footprint, which improves the circulation of people and product flows. It was by reasoning according to the length of the production run, and no longer according to the brand, that we were able to achieve this result, which enables smoother production with far fewer downtimes.”

Existing equipment retained

Much of the equipment being operated on pre-existing lines was retained and reinstalled on two new lines, including the depalletising, rinsing, filling, capping and palletising equipment.

“Our approach was intended to be highly pragmatic, taking into account the expectations of speed and flexibility along with the desire to retain and re-use existing equipment in order to comply with the budgetary framework. The overall layout of lines to factor in the constraints of the existing site was another strong point in the Gebo Cermex approach,” says Mario Trigueiro, Gebo sales engineer for the Beaucaire site.

Two filling machines per line

The solution’s effectiveness was enhanced by the installation of two filling machines on each line. For products such as vermouths which require a lengthy machine cleaning and sterilising process, the second filling machine takes over when the recipe is changed.

Line 2 has also been equipped with a new labelling machine selected for its ability to apply labels to the front, neck or back of the bottle using up to eight label references.

Gebo conveyors for all flows

Conveying and management of the accumulation of empty containers upstream from filling; of full containers through to packing; and of cases through to the palletiser is performed by Gebo conveyors and accumulation tables. Each unit is connected to a modular central architecture which groups together all parameters and manages the interactions between equipment. Conveyors installed at the Beaucaire site are also servodriven, for minimum power consumption.

A Cermex automated line end for both lines

Line 1, at high speed, includes a pressureless combiner which operates at up to 300 bottles/min. Line 2, boasting high flexibility, merges products onto one line without applying pressure at a rate of 150 bottles/h.

To manage the speed of line 1 and the flexibility of line 2, an ‘AN’ pick and place case-packing robot was installed. At each cycle, the numerical axis case packer grabs 36 bottles and places them six per case in six cases simultaneously.

Upstream from the robotic case packer, a case erector forms the case, while downstream the case gluer seals the top flaps. An inkjet printer applies the barcode and the cases are conveyed by a spiral elevator to the palletiser.

An EITTM line monitoring and performance analysis tool

The EITTM (efficiency improvement tool) developed by Gebo collects real-time operational information on each of the line’s components, to enable operators to identify the primary causes of stoppages and resolve them quickly, and to provide data for production reports.