FDBusiness.com

Canlubang, 60 km away from Manila: this was the plant chosen by the Coca-Cola Femsa giant to install the world’s fastest PET lines for soft drinks. With a daily production of nearly seven million bottles, the four lines installed by ACMI represent the highest technological development of the sector. Of these four lines, two have a nominal filling production of 81,000 bottles per hour (line 7 and line 8), while the other two stop at 63,000 bottles.

Complete Line

ACMI was responsible for the design and management of the four Canlubang lines ensuring the success of the project within the time required by the customer: from the blowing-filling-labelling block, the only part not supplied by ACMI, to the realization of the finished pallet. Unlike lines number 7 and 8, which manage only one 250 ml format at a speed of 81,000 bottles per hour, the other two lines are multiformat.

Fenix shrinkwrapper with external box and automatic changeover system.

Fenix Shrinkwrapper

The four shrink wrappers installed at Canlubang all belong to the 295 series, a series designed for packaging with film only, on two lanes, at a maximum speed of 95 packs per minute per lane. The infeed system used for the Femsa shrink wrappers is the so-called “thirty degrees with recirculation” which allows a high production speed associated with low pressure on the bottles. Thanks to this ingenious system, the bottles are laned quickly towards the wrapping area, while those in excess are conveyed on a recirculation loop that reintroduces them into the infeed flow a few meters back. Among the major innovations introduced by ACMI is the complete renewal of the shrink-wrap oven that is probably one of the most critical aspects of any shrink wrapper. In fact, both the energy consumption and the quality of the pack depend on the correct configuration of the oven. ACMI has invested heavily in recent years in order to guarantee an outcome to the expectations of the customer by working both on the electric resistances and on the flow of air inside the tunnel.

Faster palletiser and Twisterbox® layer formation system.

Automatic Film Changeover

All four shrink wrappers installed are equipped with the automatic film changeover system. It is a major breakthrough that comes from the “Compact Line” project and has already found many applications in the mineral water and soft drink industries. The two shrink-wrap film reels are placed in an external box, in the immediate vicinity of the shrink wrapper. When the shrink wrapper finishes the reel in use it loads the second reel automatically in a time of about ten seconds. At this point, the operator has all the time necessary to replace the finished reel with a new reel, without interfering with the performance of the machine that has already resumed production. The operator who intervenes on the external reel box is also in a completely safe situation, well away from the moving parts of the shrink wrapper.

Rocket pallet stretchwrapper with electronic pre-stretching system.

Twisterbox

The palletising system revolves around the Twisterbox®, an ACMI patent for the continuous layer formation. The two 81,000 single format lines are each managed by a model with two grippers, while the multiformat lines require a three gripper model. The Twisterbox system allows the preparation and formation of the layer ensuring high production speed combined with exceptional delicacy in the management of the product. The system can be configured with one, two or three gripper modules – the fastest configuration available – and is fully automatic. All format changeover operations are handled by the operator panel and do not require any mechanical intervention; this ensures a good speed of execution and a significant reduction of errors. The four Twisterbox® systems installed in Canlubang are associated with the high level infeed Faster model palletiser.

Rocket Pallet Stretchwrapper

All the lines finish with the Rocket model rotating pallet stretch wrapper equipped with a one meter high reel and automatic change over system of the pre-stretching group. The distinctive element of the system is the electronic pre-stretching group, which, thanks to specific algorithms, is able to handle the plastic phase of the film granting high stability of the pallet and a minimum consumption of material. The system reaches a maximum pre-stretching value of 400% and can be accessorised with both the antidust or the hermetic “waterproof” type system.