Hey, Caden Johnson, VP of Sales for Serpa Packaging Solutions.
Nick Bekkers, Technical Manager for Clean Control. We make the product OdoBan. We sell to Walmart, Home Depot, Sam's Club, Costco, Ace Hardware, Dollar General, a lot of your major retailers. So awesome.
Yeah, and we thought it would be a really unique opportunity to partner with Nick on this drop packer where his business is at and where we were at and unveiling this piece of equipment. It really was a perfect synergy. So what we'll do here is walk through the piece of equipment, talk about what we integrated upstream from it, how we're actually loading the product, and a lot of the features and benefits that go along with that. So first and foremost wanted to give our props to Wexxar Bell. We integrated a Wexxar Bell case erector that'll actually be filling, feeding the cases below here for the drop packer as we're infeeding product above. So what we're using is a one-to-two pneumatic laner to build out the pack pattern. Nick wants to run a 3x2 six-pack configuration for this 32-oz. product. So we're utilizing that one-to-two laner to build that pack pattern for him.
Yeah, the cool thing about the laner is we don't have to change any of our packaging. It'll fit in our box 2 by 3. Just like we do every day, so yeah.
And a key feature here that I wanna call out is the single position changeover. So we've tied a rotary dial changeover adjustment point to the product infeed and to the case infeed. It's an accordion style adjustment, so that one point as you adjust it will change over the entire infeed for both systems with one point. So you're really eliminating a lot of the changeover. For Nick, right, in the future, if he wants to run from one size to the next, he can do that pretty easily.
Yeah, for me it's my guys, right now say it's set on 1000. If we go to a gallon configuration, they change one dial, two dials, and the numbers are preset so they can look at a piece of paper, look at the HMI, go to 1200, and it's set.
And you know, Nick, for in the future, if he ever wants to run any additional sizes or pack patterns or specs to that, we can adjust for that on this piece of equipment, right? We're trying to build for him in the future to grow. Another call out too that I'll make as we kind of make our way down here is, you can see the products being loaded here. And we're building the pack pattern here in that 3x2 spec that I mentioned. An important feature here is our change-out grid and how we design this, right? Like I said, if Nick in the future wants to run different sizes, we've built this whole platform on a drawer, and so it's a very ergonomic design, two levers that release, and this whole system slides out so he can change from that 32 oz. to a gallon or do a different pack pattern, whatever that looks like for him in the future.
Yes, so the biggest thing for me is, one guy, five minutes, the whole line's changed over, but I've done the changeover. I'm not super mechanical. I just managed a lot of mechanical guys, but they flip these two levers, and it slides out. So some of our other drop packers have carts, get to roll the carts in line, sometimes the conveyors in the way, sometimes the guard rails are in the way. So it's a really big ordeal for us, with this, you just roll the the grid out, put your new grid in, and like I said, the whole changeover is five minutes that probably takes 30 seconds.
And speaking to the actual loading of the product here, Serpa, we really do well in containing our product and loading it at a high efficiency. We do everything at a 98% uptime, and you can see here with our grid funnel design, how we're going past the scoreline of the cases, making sure that we're not catching any of the raw edges, and really giving that high level of efficiency and trust and confidence in Nick that his product's gonna be there. It's gonna be the right pack pattern. It's gonna be loaded and discharged on time for his lines to be successful.
Yep, I love it. I mean, it's quiet, it's smooth, servo-driven, so we know we're catching our product. We're not glass, but if you drop it, it is gonna bust. So that was a huge thing for us having the servo tech, nice and steady. We're running about 110 bottles a minute. And yeah, it'll accommodate what we do. Yeah, Nick, you know, he called me and as we were watching this thing run, my favorite feedback that he gave me: 'Man, this thing's like a Cadillac.' It's quiet, it runs smooth, you know, and to us for this being serial number one for us, right, what a compliment. They put a lot of trust in us and to deliver that and show him that Serpa is a good partner and that will continue to be a partner for him and other drop packer customers in the future, and we're really excited about that opportunity.
Another cool thing is this grid, we can actually add a second grid to it. We could drop 12 bottles into two cases and almost double our speed with minimal investment, so we were able to make the investment in the machine now and then with a ton of room for growth, so I was very excited about that too.
So we're really excited about this debut drop packer serial number one, the first one, and you know, really excited about 100 more to come here in the very near future.
Yeah, for me, our customers could call and say I need a 4 pack or I need an 8 pack. With the five-minute change over with the flexibility of this machine, we can do it. In the past, that's a huge ordeal, but now it seems like it's very attainable.
