Krones recently received an order from Heineken Mexico to provide a new line of 60,000 bottles of recycled glass bottle production line. Back in 2009, Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma planned a new brewery in Maykey, Chihuahua, northern Mexico, their seventh brewery. In 2010, Heineken acquired Mexico FEMSA Beverage Group, including its subsidiary Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma company. Heineken opened the new brewery in 2018. At the time, orders for all process equipment were given to Stannick, a brewing process expert at the Krones Group. During the expansion, Heineken first decided that the plant would use KrGroup's filling equipment with bottle conveyor system, case conveyor system，pallet conveyor system , partly because it included a bottle type called Cuartito within the scope of the equipment. The bottle with a capacity of 190 ml, is widely used by the Mexican beer industry, but it has a relatively large diameter deviation during processing, reaching plus or minus three millimeters. This margin is relatively large and the operation of the bottle during the filling process must be considered accordingly. In addition, the Mexican brewery's recycling bottle system does not use plastic turnover boxes, but uses cartons. The cartons were in suboptimal when returning to the brewery. Cuartito Bottle and recycling carton 2 problems superimposed, forming a formidable challenge. But Krones has found a solution and adopted it in Heineken's other Mexican breweries, so Heineken now wants to use a mature experience for the new line.
Main sets include: 2 Contipac unloading loader, A Lavatec D5 double-end bottle washing machine equipped with a lye precipitation device, Linatronic Empty bottle detection machine, Modulfill HES Back-pressure filling machine, Two Checkmat FM-X and one Checkmat FEM-X testing machine, LinaFlex Pro Germicilizer, 2 Linadry blow-dryers, 2 Ergomatic adhesive labeling machines, 2 Contipac packing machines, Modulpal Pro 2AC Palletizer.
Amstel Ultra, Tecate, Dos Equis, Sol, Indio and other products can be filled in 190 ml Cuartito bottles, 325 ml standard bottles, 325 ml bottles and other high-quality bottles. The products are all packaged in 4x5 cartons. Heineken has very high requirements: all three bottles can be filled at a rate of 60,000 bottles, and all machines can reliably handle "very difficult" Cuartito bottles. In addition, the new line must also be able to operate at the lowest labor cost. Overall, Heineken attaches great importance to equipment sustainability, higher flexibility, shorter conversion time, higher operational efficiency and simplicity of operation, maintenance and scrub. In order to install the disacker and the reader in the same working area, the equipment adopts U-shaped layout. To reliably handle Cuartito bottles, both the filling machine and labeling machine are equipped with clip wheels to balance diameter deviations. Recycling cartons preferably use Contipac which has been installed in multiple sets of original equipment in Mexico. To achieve operational separation from the packing machine, the box molding machine and box sealing machine are designed as independent machines. Two labeling machines are installed in parallel. If one of them fails, the other one can achieve a 75% efficiency of the whole line. The sterilization machine is equipped with a sterilization unit monitoring system, in addition to a closed cooling tower and a dynamic adjustment system for the import and export conveyor belt. The bottle washing machine automatically added lyes and designed a relatively long alkali washing time.
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