Sidel complete line helps Niagara Bottling LLC achieve + two million cases output per year

02 Jul 2018 --- Private label bottled water supplier, Biagara Bottling LLC, has upgraded its Salt Lake City facility with a Sidel complete PET line. The line features two Super Combis, equipped with the compact ground-level preform feeder, EasyFEED, along with Gebo Cermex conveying and end-of-line equipment. This investment has enabled the bottler to significantly increase its productivity through high-speed, efficient manufacturing and high availability rates of the line.

Grounded in the fact that the PET bottled water market in the US is expected to grow by a CAGR of 3 percent year on year between 2016 and 2020 , the company decided to “rely on its long-standing business relationship with Sidel” and install a new complete PET line to enlarge its production capacity to answer consumers’ demand. This choice is proving key to deliver higher performance and safety, while increasing cost efficiency, the company states.

A boost in productivity
The installation is hoped to hugely boot the bottlers' productivity.

The starting point of the new complete line at Niagara’s plant is Sidel’s EasyFEED, a compact and safe ground-level preform feeder for PET lines. From the hopper, the preforms are lifted by an elevator column to only 2.5 meters. They are then sorted and vertically driven into the bowl of a rotary unscrambler. Positioned at the edge of a rotating table and supported by the neck flange, the preforms are moved onto a rail by a filtered airflow. Instead of traditional gravimetric infeed rails, the preforms are driven by two motorized, food-grade brush belts up to the infeed blowing wheel, contributing to keep the level of preform integrity very high. This patented technology ensures operators’ safety and overall easier operations by significantly reducing the footprint and the height for preform infeed.

“By keeping operations at ground level, removing the impact of gravity from the feeding process, and using motorized, food-grade brush belts – to move the preforms into the blow molder – the EasyFEED preform feeder ensures greater control over the production. As a result, we have seen OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) improvements, which are worth about 2 percent more produced bottles per year according to our estimations. In a line like the one embedding EasyFEED and the Sidel Super Combis, this translates to 2 million cases per year of extra productivity. That would not have been possible with a traditional preform feeder, so we are really happy with this achievement,” says Bill Hall, Executive Vice President of Manufacturing at Niagara Bottling LLC.

With output speeds up to 82,000 bottles per hour, Sidel EasyFEED is useful for PET water bottle producers like Niagara Bottling LLC, who need to combine very high-speed production lines with ultra-light PET bottles handling, while increasing the availability of their lines.s

PET Packaging enhancement
While the successful journey of the PET bottle starts with the right preform feeder, the Super Combi is crucial in reducing total costs of ownership (TCO) for the customer and maintaining a very high level of efficiency, Sidel explain. Namely, the labelling technology provided by Sidel is quite exciting for the bottled water producer, Sidel state, with Paul Wilson, Vice President of Manufactering at Niagara Bottling LCC adding:“Talking about availability, the labeler has shown impressive results: it offers great ease of operations, together with efficient and top-quality label application, ensuring high-level performances.”