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End-of-line Upgrade

Pearlwater Mineralquellen AG of Switzerland recently enhanced the efficiency of its production line as well as its bottle quality by upgrading its end-of-line palletizer.

End-of-line upgrade was accomplished recently at Pearlwater Mineralquellen AG of Switzerland.
End-of-line upgrade was accomplished recently at Pearlwater Mineralquellen AG of Switzerland.

The Sidel PalKombi Gripping palletizer was installed in 2011. But the firm wanted to increase the reliability and flexibility for the handling of various pack sizes and improve overall line efficiency by 5% with better pack and pallet stability. 

After analysing the performance of the line, Sidel`s engineers identified that the main performance loss was coming from handling small bottle packs at palletization stage. Upgrading the conveying and rotation of small bottle packs would result in improved product quality and palletizer uptime. Therefore, Sidel proposed to enhance bottle positioning on the palletizer with a new pack conveying and rotation system called Electronic Spacer. “The upgrade focuses on a new container infeed module made of modular chain conveyors across which the packs are smoothly transferred and rotated, forming rows before being pushed on the pallet,” explains Danny Bollnow, Service Sales Manager at Sidel.Enhanced bottle positioning on the infeed to palletizing has brought numerous benefits to Pearlwater Mineralquellen.Enhanced bottle positioning on the infeed to palletizing has brought numerous benefits to Pearlwater Mineralquellen.

This new system reduces impacts that can damage bottles and generates correct rows so that fewer bottles tip over, thus minimizing downtimes for manual intervention to reposition containers correctly. With electronic spacing principles, smaller containers are smoothly positioned to form correct rows, ensuring pallet accuracy for more reliable production.

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The improved palletizer was running and ready to re-start production after only three days of installation instead of one week that was planned originally. By installing the new container conveying and rotation system, Sidel was able to optimize maintenance costs, which decreased by 30%. “We are very satisfied with the project execution, follow-up, and the great collaboration we had with the Sidel team,” expresses Mr. Pascal Collaud, Head of Production & Logistics at Pearlwater. Thanks to the palletizer`s upgrade not only reliability and flexibility for the handling of various container sizes have been increased, but also the company can now produce very small packs, including a 250-mL bottle format, in 3x2 packs. Additionally, right after the retrofit, Sidel`s team conducted valuable training for Pearlwater`s operators on the new functions of the palletizer, allowing employees to be quickly and fully operational on the equipment.


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