UK natural spring water company invests in second complete PET line

Following an increase in demand from both customers and consumers, Montgomery Waters, based in Wales, has recently installed a second complete line solution at its manufacturing site for the production of liquids in PET.

The line solution, supplied by Sidel, is being used to bottle still and sparkling water for both Montgomery Waters’ range of brands, as well as for other manufacturers. The company says the addition of the new line is allowing it to increase capacity, flexibility and quality.

“In 2012 we moved to in-house blowing and updated our labelling by upgrading our existing high speed line, increasing production capacity by 50 percent, with a Sidel Matrix Combi, labeller and conveyors from Sidel,” commented Paul Delves, Managing Director of Montgomery Waters.

“Now increased demand from both consumers and our customers meant we needed to invest in an additional line – one that offered maximum flexibility and could be integrated with the solutions we had already installed to provide operator flexibility across our lines, reduce training needs and maintenance costs."

A complete PET line solution, says Sidel, involves much more than its individual parts, as it must embrace everything, from the packaging concept through the equipment process, the line design and supply, productivity management analysis and a continuous focus on line performance improvement. The whole solution needs to be planned to meet the challenges of the supply chain, with the underlying objective always being to achieve the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO).

The new complete line solution installed at Montgomery Waters includes the latest generation of Sidel Matrix equipment: the compact blow-fill-cap Combi solution featuring a Sidel Matrix blower SBO14 and a Sidel Matrix filler SF300 FM, along with a Sidel Matrix rollfed labeller SL70 and conveying, shrink wrapping and palletisation equipment.

The Sidel Matrix Combi features a blendfill version of the Sidel Matrix Carbonator, meaning that it uses only one buffer tank, reducing the CO2 consumption as well as the equipment footprint. The 70 filling valves are equipped with magnetic flow meters, electronically controlled to ensure accurate volume filling into the PET bottle and therefore avoiding spillage and beverage waste.

 The Sidel Matrix labeller is a highly modular rollfed labeller, which can be installed in various different layouts and easily reconfigured.  Changeover times are 30 percent faster than previous labeller generations, says Sidel, with 40 percent less downtime required for maintenance.

With the addition of the new complete line, Montgomery Waters says it will be able to produce PET water bottles in four formats, from 330 ml to 2 L, at speeds of up to 31,000 bottles per hour (bph).