Pneumatics ensure beer travels well in korea

German handling specialist used pneumatic components at the heart of a novel packaging solution designed to protect beer bottles during transit in Korea.

German handling specialist Meypack used Festo pneumatic components at the heart of a unique packaging solution designed to protect beer bottles during transit in Korea.

The idea itself is close to the hearts of Koreans who, statistically, consume an average of 45 litres per head per year - more than twice that of China.

Korean brewery Hite uses corrugated cardboard boxes to pack beer bottles for transportation, which offer weight and cost advantages over the European norm of plastic crates.

Hite owns the most successful beer brands in South Korea, quenching the thirsts of more than half the country's beer-drinking population with its dominant 55% market share.

However, the cardboard boxes do not protect the bottles from knocking together, which causes breakage and spillage.

To prevent the waste, Hite brewery had been using corrugated cardboard separator panels inserted by hand into each box, but turned to handling system specialist Meypack Verpackungssystemtechnik of Germany for an automated solution.

(Incidentally, the Germans consume almost three times the amount of beer per head than the Koreans, so it's safe to assume that they know a thing or two about packing it safely.) Meypack developed a packaging system to insert the separators into the wrap-around boxes by adapting one of its standard machines to handle longitudinal and transverse panels.

Festo suction grippers mounted on a double-acting cylinder with twin piston rods pick up the separators, transport them to the insertion shafts and eject them into the shafts at a rate of 300 buffers per minute.

Festo valve terminals (CPV) are used to cope with the fast cycle times.

Conveyorised groups of bottles have the longitudinal separator panels inserted between them first, then the transverse panels.

Next the bottles move on the conveyor to a process that wraps the corrugated cardboard box around them.

Again, pneumatic suction grippers pick the flat-packed boxes from a stack, make the folds, and close with hot glue.

In all the Meypack system can process up to 45 boxes per minute, including the separator insertion procedure.

Additionally, Meypack has capitalised on other similar applications with its Hite Beer packaging solution, including wine and pharmaceutical bottle packing that demand rapid and easy changeover of box formats.

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