With a brand that is more than 200 years old, Schweppes is synonymous with quality.
Schweppes Australia holds nearly a quarter of the carbonated soft drink market, with a portfolio consisting of owned and franchised brands, including Schweppes, Solo, Spring Valley, Cool Ridge and Cottee's, plus the local licence to make Pepsi and Gatorade.
Typical of FMCG production, Schweppes needs reliability in every aspect of its filling lines. It also needs to meet its customers’ coding requests.
A year ago, the company upgraded 2L and 1.25L PET lines.
Ian Houlder, senior project engineering manager with Schweppes, says, “We needed to comply with our customers’ requirements, with regard to SSCC and having labels applied on opposite sides of a pallet.”
Already having a number of existing Fox IV units from Matthews in both SSCC and TUN applications, Houlder says they then did a full review of Avery units (supplied by Matthews), along with equipment from three other vendors.
“We did a matrix of all the different features and benefits of each machine, weighted it, scored it and the Avery units came out on top,” Houlder says.
“Then, because Matthews is an existing supplier, we did an evaluation of the company as an after-sales service provider. They passed well.”
Schweppes installed 28 ALS 204s from Matthews — two per filling line — in seven factories, across five states; each printer is positioned just after the packing machine.
Ian Houlder says the ability to integrate the Matthews’ equipment into a fully networkable coding system was a feature.
It also has some future scope for Schweppes.
Integration
Mark Dingley, manager of the Identification Systems Group (iDS Group) within Matthews Intelligent Identification, says a key tool that differentiates Matthews is its iDS Group, iDS’s software-development methodology and Matthews’ integration and automation capabilities.
Dingley says a good example is incorporating Beckhoff panel PCs in with the Schweppes installation.
“We needed to install a panel PC that would last the distance and the requirements — they do cop a battering from the environment and operators.
“Many brands in the market utilise components that you find in your office PCs and/or laptops. For instance, many cheaper brands use hard drives that come straight out of laptops, with a touch screen put on the front of them. They simply do not hold up in production environments.
"However, having worked with Beckhoff very successfully on many occasions, we took the opportunity to install this brand into Schweppes, along with the Avery ALSs.
"Both are exceptionally well made pieces of equipment and both just happen to be German built and designed.
“Just looking at Beckhoff, for instance, every component is built to a very high specification — and that’s what makes it superior in its field."
Ian Houlder’s position means the plant is his customer as well. From a project standpoint, he must ensure he gets the best suppliers, top support and excellent reliability, before handing over to Operations.
Traceability
Ian Houlder says Schweppes’ retail customers want traceability, hence require two readable barcodes on each case.
“Obviously they can penalise us if we don’t supply the product with the correct labelling," he explains.
"The verification system exists to ensure that we do indeed have two labels on every carton off the line.”
Some key facts:
- need for SSCC labels on opposite sides of each pallet
- ALS performed top in a matrix of contenders
- ability for fully networkable coding system
- integration includes top-performing equipment, such as panel PCs
Matthews Intelligent Identification will be on stand 170 at Auspack.
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