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New equipment fuels winery's growth

This Napa winery knows that only by investing in new packaging machinery can it become the outsourcing solutions leader in the global wine industry.See in-plant video

Near the end of the line, hot melt ink-jet coding marks each case with lot and date code information.
Near the end of the line, hot melt ink-jet coding marks each case with lot and date code information.

Golden State Vintners of Napa, CA, bottles and sells wine under its own Edgewood and Weston brands. But the firm’s real goal is to become “the leader in outsourcing solutions for the wine industry worldwide.” The only way to achieve such a goal is to make sure that sufficient bottling and packaging capacity is in place when customers come calling. That’s why the firm just added a new bottling line in a newly opened facility in American Canyon, CA.

Flexibility, of course, is crucial when the majority of your business is contract packaging. Two machines in particular help give GSV’s new line the flexibility it needs. First is a capsule applicator from Robino Galandrino, represented in the United States by fp Packaging (Napa, CA). It can apply any one of the three varieties of capsules used commonly today: polyvinyl chloride for inexpensive wines, a film/foil lamination for mid-priced varieties, and a tin capsule for high-end wines. The PVC capsule is a heat-shrink option while the other two are spun on.

Also versatile is the labeler, from Cavagnino & Gatti, another Italian firm represented in the United States by fp Packaging. “It can handle pressure-sensitive and cold-glue-applied labels,” says general manager Michael Blom. “And it can apply front, back, and neck labels. All three can be cold glue or pressure-sensitive.”

Glass bottles in both 750-mL and 1.5-L sizes are filled on the line. Changing from one to the other takes about 90 minutes, says Blom.

Rated speed is 200 bottles/min when the smaller bottle is in production. On the day Packaging World visited, 1.5-L bottles were filled at about 100/min.

Uncasing by hand

Uncasing, for now, is done by hand. Bottles are conveyed into a monobloc rinser/filler/corker supplied by Bertolaso, also represented by fp Packaging. All three units in the monobloc system are enclosed in a HEPA-filtered room that keeps contamination to a minimum in the crucial place where wine meets bottle. “We’re certainly not the first to go to such lengths, but this approach does represent the latest thinking in the field,” says Blom.

Rinsing by the 28-head rinser includes a burst of sterile air to blow out any case dust the bottles may contain. The air nozzle is 10 mm in dia while the bottle’s neck finish is 18. So any particles or dust to be blown out of the bottle has room to fall out and into a collection tray. Then the bottles are purged with nitrogen to reduce oxygen levels.

Next is the 48-valve filler, which determines how fast everything else in the line needs to run. Downstream sensors constantly detect bottle population provided by the filler and signal downstream machines to speed up or slow down accordingly. Ryan Packaging Solutions (Napa, CA) helped with line integration.

Corking is next, and here again, GSV employs the very latest technology.

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