Brewery bottles beers efficiently with line integration

At the beginning of the year, German brewery Rothaus installed sorting and filling lines at its High Black Forest site to maximise uptime and increase reliability, with the help of Gebo Cermex.

Germany is traditionally a beer-drinking country, and one regionally popular brew is the Rothaus Pils Tannenzäpfle, produced by Rothaus Brewery. Founded in 1791, it is the most well-known regional brewery in Germany’s Black Forest. Today, the Badische Staatsbrauerei Rothaus AG (Baden State Brewery Rothaus) is recognised for the premium quality of its beer, and its popularity is expected to continue. The foundation of its success are its modern brewing facilities; for example, the bottling facility has some of the most advanced technologies available.

However, its ageing bottling line could no longer guarantee the high hygiene and quality standards of the company, and it was receiving returnable glass bottles from other producers that it could not process according to its top productivity control routines, which was impacting the high efficiency target of its new filling line. This was proving particularly difficult in the summer season, when the infeed of bottles increased and the number of operators at the brewery was reduced.

The Gebo Cermex team supplied the integration services for setting up a new sorting and a new bottling line. The company managed to fully integrate 30 different machines from more than a dozen different suppliers, creating a new line that can sort 3200 crates/h and bottles up to 76,800 bph. Gebo Cermex also provided the crown feeders and the conveying components, including pallets management within the brewery.

“Both for the sorting and bottling lines, we successfully answered the request from the customer to limit the number of operators to three per line, thanks to an ‘arena’ layout, giving quick and easy access to all the machines,” said Louis Merienne, Sales Director Europe, Beverage Markets at Gebo Cermex.

Roger Jäger, Director of the filling department at Rothaus, noted, “The big challenge for us was actually the sorting line because this is not a standard line in the classic sense. Here, we are very satisfied: the concepts have very quickly shown that they are perfectly fine. With the new filling line, we can already see utilisation rates of more than 80%. Considering that the line has not yet been running for a full year, this is remarkable value. This is due to the fact that we are currently supplying only sorted empty containers to the filling line, which of course brings enormous operating safety to the lines.”

This has helped deliver reliability and efficiency regardless of the percentage of irregular returnable bottles. This means the crates can contain, on average, 40% and in peak times up to 80% of bottles from other producers without causing issues. In addition, the sorting line can run at 85% efficiency in 12 different modes to sort bottles and crates, fill used or new crates — with used or new bottles — and create stocks of empty crates. This contributes to a performance increase of the bottling lines, with the one installed most recently working at 90% efficiency.

Working together since 1991, Merienne further explained the successful partnership between the two companies.

“Our globally renowned capabilities in line engineering have been especially appreciated due to the fact that — as an engineering integrator — we are trusted and valued as an independent partner. This relationship of trust has been built through time and on the basis of concrete performances and facts. Thanks to our line engineering expertise, we were able to help Rothaus in setting up the business case and calculating their return on investment (ROI) of sorting the goods themselves. Our patented sorting system solution is controlled at the line level: the central automation program regulates the speed of the machines, for continuous and seamless running of the whole line, leading to maximum uptime for the customer.”