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Efficiency tops 90% at Edna Valley Vineyard

A first-of-its-kind accumulation table boosts bottling efficiency by 20% and helps attract new business.See video

Pw 13733 Chardonnay

A 10-fold increase in wine production at Edna Valley Vineyard over the past six years has had a dramatic impact on the bottling line. Yearly, the winery bottles 180ꯠ cases of estate-produced wine and another 320ꯠ cases from contract bottling accounts. That growth has resulted in a trio of production upgrades at this plant, nestled in the hills near San Luis Obispo, CA.

The first of these upgrades is an Infinity™ accumulation table from Garvey Corp. installed in October 2001. It was the very first Infinity installed anywhere. In the last two years, Garvey reports that it has since made 60 installations of the patented accumulators.

“This was the first accumulation we’ve ever had on the line,” says bottling manager Scott Childers, “and it’s been fantastic.”

Since the addition of the Infinity table, production efficiency has averaged in the low 90% range on a regular basis, Childers reports. That’s about a 20% improvement from the previous efficiency.

Small footprint, big results

The 5’ x 6’ oval Infinity conveyor, positioned between a newer capsule applicator and an existing capsule spinner, smoothes out bottle flow so that these two pieces of equipment, along with other upstream and downstream machinery, continue running at highest efficiency. Acknowledging the accumulator’s small size, Childers points out that the table did permit the winery to increase production rates by 10% to 120 bottles/min. It operates totally mechanically without devices such as photoeyes.

The Infinity system is an alternative to other accumulation tables that cannot handle the reverse-tapered bottles (RTBs) that are a crucial part of EVV’s package mix. Although use of tapered bottles has tapered off the past two years, the Infinity continues to boost efficiency for all of EVV’s bottle formats. It was also by far the least noisy of the alternatives, according to Childers. It paid for itself in six months. “We hit a home run with it,” Childers says. “Now, the labeler operator has all the time he needs to change a label roll. He can do a better job, and that reduces reworked product.”

After the installation, EVV modified the table to accept bottles introduced to the line at that point, such as filled, unlabeled bottles. That was important for EVV, a contract bottler and packager.

A 'lifetime' of accumulation

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