Family-owned and operated since 2002, Virginia Artesian Bottling Co. offers bottled water that is sourced from an aquifer deep underground its Hanover, Va., facility. This protects the water from contamination, making it pure, free of pollutants, naturally alkaline, and rich in nutrients.
Offering a uniquely pure and refreshing water as it does, the firm—whose plant is 100% solar powered, by the way—has always been dedicated to meeting the expectations of environmentally conscious consumers by relying on recyclable glass and PET bottles in sizes ranging from 8 oz to 1 L. In 2020, aluminum was added to the mix in three sizes: 12-oz, 16-oz, and 1-L.
“While it’s more than double the cost of plastic, it can be endlessly recycled,” says Nick Brown, president. “Besides, our overall focus has always been on offering premium products, so aluminum neatly fits the expectations of our customers.”
Virginia Artesian has some presence locally on the retail scene, but the bulk of its business has been in the private-label space. Think high-end hotels, resorts, and exclusive golf clubs, for example. Growing steadily over the years, the firm has upgraded its packaging equipment as needed. Its latest investment: A WR-I wraparound case packer from Polypack.
“We’ve been running a Polypack shrink wrap machine since 2016, so we had that relationship already in place,” says Brown. “When you have that kind of experience with a machinery supplier and you know you can put your trust in the lines of communication, that makes things easier. This wraparound system helps us a lot where some of our private label business is concerned, since some customers were asking for corrugated secondary packaging that was more sustainable. All the corrugated cases we use are made from recycled content, so it helps bring things full circle when you remove the plastic shrink wrap from the recyclable aluminum and move instead into a case made of recycled material.”
In addition to the 16-oz bottle shown here, Virginia Artesian also offers its aluminum bottle in 12-oz and 1-L sizes.Virginia Artesian
In evaluating case packers, Brown notes, versatility and ease of changeover were high on the list of priorities for two reasons. First, with so much of its operation geared toward private-label business, it’s only natural that being able to satisfy multiple customer requirements and preferences is essential. “Being able to go from one case size to another in less than 20 minutes is huge,” says Brown. Also making versatility desirable is the fact that multiple sizes in glass, PET, and aluminum bottles are all handled by the Polypack system.
Filled, capped, and labeled, the bottles are flood fed into the case packer in four lanes. When the desired number of bottles are in place, either 12 or 24, all are released into a sweep arm that sends them at a right angle onto a staging area. Then a second sweep arm advances the bottles onto a corrugated case blank that has been picked from a magazine feed by vacuum cups and erected. Adhesive is applied to the flaps by a Nordson Pro Blue Flex system and then the case enters a compression station where the flaps are closed. All that’s left is date coding, which is done by a Keyence ink-jet printer mounted a short distance downstream from the case packer.
As for throughput, Brown says the 1-L bottles run at about 160/min and the smaller bottles a little faster than that. He adds that while palletizing is currently done manually, that could change soon as the firm is looking into installing a second bottling line.
