One renowned brewery in Northern India decided to automate case packing and palletising operation for their existing Beer in Can filling line of capacity 360 cans per min from manual to fully automatic post-shrink wrapping. After a series of discussions and factory visits, the customer decided to award the contract to Clearpack for
(1) wrap-around case packing model Invopac and
2) Automatic robotic palletiser together
with interconnecting conveyors as per the following layout and for a speed of 18 cases per minute.
The customer decided to choose Clearpack and their Invopac wrap-around case/carton packer in place of other available brands because of the following reasons-
1) Huge savings of approx. 20% on their RSC (top load) corrugated cases – The customer was doing manual case packing by manually picking and placing shrink-wrapped beer cans inside the cases/cartons. However when he decided to automate the changed case type to wrap around case which resulted in approximately 20% savings on his corrugated case prices due to savings on board consumption since now opening and closing flaps are on the shorter side of cases.
2) Invopac wrap-around case packer is just one machine, unlike the RSC case packing system where a customer needs 3 machines- case packer, case erector and case sealer.
3) Invopac has a very Long service life, and a solid, modular SWISS design. This is the famous Involve brand which started in Switzerland in 1971 and the brand is owned by Clearpack group since the year 2009-10. Very heavy duty and Low maintenance cost.
4) Invopac wrap-around case packer can handle wrap-around cases as well as trays on the same machine without any change parts.
5) It can handle multiple sizes and collations with easily adjustable features. Quick changeover without tools.
6) Invopac machine has two sides pressing station which will guarantee the “squareness” of the case making it compact and doing perfect palletising and loading in warehouses.
7) Invopac wrap-around case packer has a clean and open design as per TPM.
8) Strong local after-sales support by highly trained Clearpack service engineers. Clearpack engineers are just a call away and are able to provide excellent after-sales services which the customer is pleased and appreciative of.
9) Tight cases (Cardboard savings) because of the Wrap Around principle compare with the side loader principle.
The best part is this machine was installed and commissioned together with the track_n_trace system due to strict regulations in the Indian alcoholic beverage industry.
Every bottle and cans have to have excise stickers on the top and it is fully recorded together with the corresponding corrugated case where proper another sticker label is applied and data of products inside the case and the corresponding case has to match.
For this Clearpack designed and manufactured their Invopac wrap-around case packer with sufficient space and mounting where several sets of cameras were fixed on top to record all the excise stickers on top of cans going inside the single case.
At the discharge of the case, the label is applied by print and apply system or precoded sticker labels and again another set of cameras, in the end, senses this label and does corresponding linking with beer cans inside the case thereby establishing mother and child relationship. In case of any unsensed excise sticker on beer cans or any unsensed label applied on the case, the whole corrugated case will be rejected and will not go for further palletising operation.
At the end of this case, packing operation Clearpack has supplied state of art and very efficient robot palletising system incorporating heavy duty ABB robot to pick and place filled corrugated cases/cartons onto the wooden pallet of 1.2 m x 1 m for stacking in their warehouses. This automatic robotic palletising operation ensured that cases are handled very gently and it does not damage the quality of corrugated cases while handling and palletising them which is the case with many manual palletising operations. Clearpack has supplied palletising robot system with pallets on the ground in 1 in 2 out configuration in a very compact footprint with all the safety features including safety fences, safety locks, curtain sensors etc.