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One can line begets another

Oriental Brewery was so pleased with the turnkey, high-speed, highly automated can line it installed last year, it’s installing a near twin this year.

A specially designed pallet conveyor has been designed to handle a high volume of pallets and supply enough cans for a complete production shift.
A specially designed pallet conveyor has been designed to handle a high volume of pallets and supply enough cans for a complete production shift.

The average South Korean consumes roughly 36 L (9.5 gal) of beer each year, making it the country’s top alcoholic beverage. Oriental Brewery is one of the main beneficiaries of beer’s popularity, as it is now number one in the South Korean beer market.


“The outstanding quality of our filling and packaging systems is one of the factors that enable us to produce top quality products,” says Charles Park, executive director of the brewery. To maintain this level of product quality out into the future, the firm recently made an additional investment in two KHS canning lines. “The decision to go with KHS essentially reflects our strategy of active future proofing,” says Park.


Beer in cans has become extremely popular recently in the South Korean beer market, and this trend is expected to continue. Thus the new can lines at Oriental Brewery’s South Korea plants. The one at the Gwangju facility handles 0.5-, 0.355, and 0.33-L aluminum cans and has been running since July 2011. The second line, being installed now in the city of Icheon, will be virtually identical to the line at Gwangju. Both are turnkey KHS lines. Says Park, “Procuring everything from a single source and having everything under KHS control gives us precisely the assurance we need as we continue to expand the canned beer business.”


At Gwangju, an Innopal ASH is used for can depalletizing. The pallets are raised to the push-off position, and the Innopal ASH ensures gentle depalletizing by removing the cans layer by layer. All the surfaces of the depalletizer that come into contact with the cans are covered with plastic sheeting to prevent damage to the cans. An automatic pallet liner remover picks up the cover frames and pallet liners with vacuum grippers and places them in separate magazines provided for this purpose.


To meet the specific needs of Oriental Brewery, a pallet conveyor has been installed in front of the depalletizer. The conveyor is designed to handle a high volume of pallets and supply enough cans for a complete production shift. Myunggoon Choi, engineering manager at the Oriental Brewery production facility in Gwangju, says this was done specifically to reduce forklift traffic. It minimizes congestion and eliminates potential hazards at the filling plant.


Once the cans have been placed onto the line, the KHS conveyors handle them very gently and unscramble them. Prior to rinsing on an inclined rinser, the cans are subjected to rigorous inspection. An empty can inspection system verifies that the can shape is correct, the shape of the opening meets specification, and no particulate matter is present in the cans. Damaged and dirty cans are rejected.


During the rinsing process, cans are lowered to the filler level and then enter the core section of the line: the electronically controlled volumetric Innofill DVD filler with 108 filling stations. Although the filler is currently configured to handle only the standard 0.5-liter, 0.355-liter, and 0.33-liter cans, that could well change in the future. The Innofill DVD could, for example, handle sleek or slim cans, which are much more slender than standard versions, should marketing decide to introduce those variations. Only new format parts and guides would be needed, and they could be swapped in very quickly.

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