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Robson's assembles a honey of a line

Filling, capping and labeling jars of honey by hand was too slow at this Arizona honey maker, especially with new markets on the horizon. Automated machinery was the answer

The rotary filler (top) is driven by a motor capable of handling Robson's viscous spun honey. A slight indentation in each bottl
The rotary filler (top) is driven by a motor capable of handling Robson's viscous spun honey. A slight indentation in each bottl

At Robson’s Old West Honey in Aguila, AZ, the addition of “spun” honey to the product mix, combined with an anticipated spike in volume after a food broker was hired to broaden distribution, led the firm to replace a manual operation with all new automated packaging equipment.

They didn’t stop at equipment, either. Management also elected to switch out of stock containers—some glass, some polyethylene terephthalate and some polypropylene—in favor of custom-designed bottles of PP that have a signature honeycomb pattern molded into the shoulder (see sidebar, p. 30).

Central to the new filling line is an eight-head volumetric rotary filler. Its motor has sufficient power to handle not only the regular honey but also the spun honey. Biner Ellison (Los Angeles, CA) built the filler, giving it a 5-HP motor from Baldor (Fort Smith, AR).

“Spun honey is nearly as viscous as peanut butter,” says owner Charles Robson. “We didn’t want to have two separate fillers for the two products, so we had this one designed with a motor big enough to do both.” The filler usually runs at about 60 to 70 24-oz bottles/min.

On the day Packaging World visited Robson’s, 48-oz PET containers were being filled on the new line as the firm awaited delivery of its new custom containers. The equipment handles the new PP containers just as it did the PET containers being filled during PW’s visit.

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