Brewery giant beefs up production with Domino printers
Private brewery giant Wells & Young’s has said that it has beefed up its production by investing in Domino printers
According to the firm, an investment in Domino’s A-series continuous inkjet printers has enabled it to boost productivity and cut costs – with the company set to almost fully recoup its investment after just one year.
The Bedford-based, £189m-turnover business, which was founded in 1876 and produces a range of cask beers and speciality lagers, including the Bombardier, McEwan’s, Estrella Damm and Kirin Ichiban brands, turned to Domino after deciding to replace its existing coding and marking machines from a different manufacturer, which it was using to code bottles, cans, trays and cardboard boxes.
The family-run company, which has installed five new A420i and two new A300+ Opaque continuous ink jet (CIJ) printers, runs both a high-speed canning and a high-speed bottling line, which it uses to produce up to 30,000 bottles per hour and up to 51,000 cans per hour.
It also exports more than eight million pints of beer annually to 25 countries around the world, including the USA, Canada, Italy and Australia.
Downtime
Wells & Young’s small pack continuous improvements leader Justin Adams said: “Our previous coding and marking printers were early model machines, which we hadn’t upgraded. Due to the age of the machines we had a lot of maintenance problems, downtime was high and we had to have a back up machine for each printer in case any of them developed a fault.
“I had worked with Domino in previous roles so it was the first supplier I called to quote for the job as I had always been impressed with the quality and reliability of both its technology and the excellent customer care.
“When the proposals came back from the different suppliers the Domino team stood out for having really listened to my criteria and for having tailored their recommended solution accordingly.
“Our calculations revealed that, by choosing Domino, our annual running costs, including ink, would be 50% less than if we opted for one of the other suppliers.”
