Palletizing/depalletizing

Nature's Way Purewater: Depalletizing

On this bottled water line, one of two robots from Custom Metal Designs depalletizes bagged layers of 1-gal containers and places them onto the infeed of the debagging system. The output of each of the twin units is nearly two LDPE-bagged layers/min, or a total of 180 containers/min.

September 30, 2001

Leaders (UNIVERSAL TAXONOMY PW): Page 1631

Filling/capping, liquid & viscous

Nature's Way Purewater: Rotary filling

On this bottled water line, the 30-valve rotary gravity-flow filler from Federal Mfg. is said to be among the largest in the water industry running at this high speed of 180 cpm. It operates with no container/no fill functionality.

September 30, 2001

Conveying & accumulation

Nature's Way Purewater: Lane dividing and case packing

On this bottled water line, servo-operated lane divider directs the jugs from one lane into three lanes ahead of continuous motion case packing. The case packer, from Douglas Machine, meters jugs via paddles to a cam-operated arm that pushes three atop the folded blank, which is erected by vacuum pick-and-place cups.

September 30, 2001

Secondary Packaging

Nature's Way Purewater: Stretch wrapping

On this bottled water line, pallet loads are unitized by an overhead-style stretch wrapper from ITW Mima using 20-ft-wide film. This model at Nature's Way wraps at speeds to one pallet every 12 seconds.

September 30, 2001

Containers

Latrobe Brewing Co.: Automated truck unloading

At this Rolling Rock brewery, pallets of bulk glass are pulled automatically from trucks with no forklift intervention.

September 30, 2001

Secondary Packaging

Latrobe Brewing Co.: Depalletizing

At this Rolling Rock brewery, an automatic band cutter cuts eight bands before pallets are conveyed into the depalletizer. Once in the depalletizer, slip sheets are removed and stacked automatically.

September 30, 2001

Secondary Packaging

Latrobe Brewing Co.: Case erecting and loading

At this Rolling Rock brewery, at the infeed of a case erector from Pearson Packaging Systems, a robotic positioner picks bundles of 12-count corrugated shippers, orients the bundle, cuts the band, and feeds the band to a grinder.

September 30, 2001

Filling/capping, dry

Latrobe Brewing Co.: Filling and pasteurizing

At this Rolling Rock brewery, the line's two 108-valve fillers (from SIG Beverages) sit side-by-side. Shortly after filling and capping, bottles enter a double-deck pasteurizer, after which they pass through two down-bottle ejectors.

September 30, 2001

Secondary Packaging

Latrobe Brewing Co.: Laser-guided vehicles

At this Rolling Rock brewery, a laser-guided vehicle with a pallet load of corrugated trays maneuvers its way to a tray packer and trades its full pallet for an empty one.

September 30, 2001

Labeling

Label uniformity bill introduced1;again

This year’s version of legislation establishing national uniformity in science-based food labeling standards was introduced in the House by Rep. Richard Burr (R-NC) with 29 bipartisan co-sponsors.

September 30, 2001

Coding, Printing & Labeling

COO labeling "down under" also opposed

In comments to the Australia New Zealand Food Authority on its proposal for country-of-origin labeling, the International Council of Grocery Manufacturers Associations, a nongovernmental organization, strongly supported the option in the proposal whereby no specific requirement for a country-of-origin declaration would be included in the new joint Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code.

September 30, 2001

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Born in the USA?

USDA is considering a petition, endorsed by American Farm Bureau, AMI, National Cattlemen’s Beef Assn., National Meat Assn., and Food Marketing Institute, to create a “USA Beef” voluntary certification label for industry to use as a marketing tool to increase beef sales.

September 30, 2001

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Country-of-origin labeling knocked

Opponents of proposed new mandatory country-of-origin labeling requirements are worried that a pending bill, the Consumer Right to Know Act of 2001, will be wrapped into the FY2002 Agriculture Appropriations bill due for consideration in the Senate.

September 30, 2001