Welsh milk processor invests in filling lines
Welsh liquid milk processor Tomlinson’s Dairies has invested £22 million in Sainsbury’s listings in the UK. As part of the investment programme, Ektam has been chosen to manufacture and supply two new fully automated milk filling lines capable of filling 68,000 litres of milk per hour.
Each one of the two new lines is expected to fill six different bottle formats from 189ml up to six-pint bottles.
Philip Tomlinson, co-founder of Tomlinson Dairies, says, “We visited Ektam at its production plant and were very impressed with the quality, manufacturing, level of engineering and experience in turnkey filling lines.
The supply scope of Ektam starts with each filling line being fed through the blow moulding facility through an Ektam elevator/twister unit equipped with auto conveyor adjustment for each bottle type for instant format change over by accepting the containers from the empty bottle conveyor into Ektam’s “Megaroll” opp wraparound labelling machine, which is equipped with two reel-fed label feed stations.
The bottles than accumulate on Ektam’s space saving tandem accumulation conveyor systems before entering the “flowmatic” filling and capping clean room machine with auto height adjustment for quick format change over, the company says.
Each filling head measures the liquid volume with electromagnetic flowmeters. The main advantage of this technique is the hygienic non-contact filling with high accuracy flowmeters on each filling head allowing filling capacities up to 60,000 bottles per hour. Filling is followed by the capping station, supplied by world leader Arol pick and place capper with anti-dust and cap sterilisation system.
The bottles are than sent through the Enercon induction sealing unit followed by the FT inspection system for fill level, cap colour, cap presence, cap misalignment, foil detection with an ejection system. The filled bottles are than packed into individual trolleys with trolley handler and a pick and place robot.
The fully automatic filling and capping line includes an auto foam and clean system allowing human free cleaning of the filling and capping line after production as well as a CIP system with a simple push button.
Kursat Uysal from Ektam UK, comments, “This is a very exciting time for Ektam having secured the manufacture and supply of two fully automated filling lines first time into the UK at Tomlinson’s dairies.
“Following the commissioning of the two lines we will be extending our offering and activities in the UK concentrating on dairy, drinks and beverages sectors for HDPE, PET, glass and can filling lines.”
