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Secondary packaging done offline at Carlsberg

Carlsberg Germany creates offline center for secondary packaging of nonstandard packaging formats, replacing manual packing and increasing output to 14,400 bottles/hr.

TOP-CLIP. Carlsberg’s Astra brand uses a top-clip paperboard ‘carton’ to package its six packs.
TOP-CLIP. Carlsberg’s Astra brand uses a top-clip paperboard ‘carton’ to package its six packs.

Breweries achieve maximum efficiency with their in-line packaging lines when they are working with standard-size packages, crates, and pallets. Any deviation in these sizes can throw a proverbial monkey wrench in the works, making many packaging shapes simply impossible to handle in-line. To address this issue, in spring 2013, The Carlsberg Group’s Hamburg, Germany, brewery commissioned an offline secondary packaging center in addition to its standard, in-line system that can handle up to 14,400 bottles/hr with great flexibility.

Carlsberg produces and packages a variety of beer brands at the Hamburg location—among them, its namesake Carlsberg, Astra, Lubzer, and Holsten Edel—with each one having a particular multipack sleeve, crate, and pallet-pattern configuration. Once the beers are produced, they are loaded into crates of specific dimensions that then need to be unloaded for cartoning, repacking, and palletizing for distribution. In the past, these brands could not be handled on the standard, in-line packaging line, so they were done manually.

“Carlsberg’s in-line packaging line is optimized for output. It is not optimized for flexibility,” says Georg Koutsogiannis, Sales Engineer at IPS International Packaging Systems GmbH, which implemented the offline secondary packaging center. “All format changes decrease the line efficiency. It is difficult and sometimes—depending on the format—impossible to add new packaging formats.”
To automate the packaging of Carlsberg’s nonstandard secondary packaging formats for increased productivity, IPS and Gerhard Schubert GmbH presented the company with a highly flexible off-line concept for unpacking, carton erecting and filling, repacking, and palletizing multipacks.

Modular system offers flexibility
As a general contractor, IPS designed, planned, and implemented the entire offline secondary packaging line. The core of the solution is Schubert’s TLM technology, which combines eight robot-based modules driven by intelligent software for a high degree of flexibility. The line is also equipped with robotic depalletizers and palletizers from PCA Roboter-und Verpackungstechnik GmbH that use KUKA robots, as well as a crate washing and turning system.

The line offers extreme flexibility for a range of sizes, including a six-pack with classic paperboard sleeve or a top-clip (a sleeve that covers just the bottle neck and closure), loaded in various crate sizes (11-, 20-, 27-, and 30-ct); a 24-ct pin-partition crate; and 36- and 40-ct high-density polyethylene trays from Logipack. Pallet sizes include Euro, Düsseldorfer “half pallet” (600 x 800 x 163 mm), 1/4 Chep pallet display, and brewery pallets.

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