Black Country brewery Holden's new robot has a lot of bottle

Parts of the Holden's brewing business, Edwin Holden's Bottling Company Ltd is celebrating its 70th year by winning more work from small and medium-sized breweries across the UK looking for a firm to bottle their own beers.

The company prides itself on its distinct heritage fell, which has endeared it to a long list of ale brewing customers, but a complete rethink of how the business operates has seen Holden's investing over the last two years in labelling machinery, conveyor systems, packaging machinery and, most recently, a robot to put the bottles into pallets at the end of the processing line.

Mark Hammond, production manager of Holden's and a third generation family member, explained that the level of automation at Holden's isn't what might be expected in a small business.

"Robots are normally associated with large corporations, typically car production, but the investment for us makes sense with a fairly short return on investment," he said. "We need to remain competitive, maintain flexibility and protect staff from risks of repetitive lifting of heavy weights."

After a series of trials Holden's chose to work with Kawasaki Robotics UK, the Warrington-based arm of a firm that started making robots for Japanese factories 44 years ago. The company now has 1,800 robots in operation at sites around the UK.

Mark Hammond said: "We fill five bottle types and pack into eight different size cartons varying in weight from six kilos to 13 kilos; so the system design needed to allow for flexibility and fast programme change-overs to allow handling of over 30 tonnes per day."

After carrying out trials at Kawasaki's UK facility a system was put together by PAK Automation, a Kawasaki robot system integrator. With limited production space Holden's were concerned that installation should not affect production and installation of the full system, safety guarding and its commissioning was completed in five days.

The palletising system comprises an input area for the cartons of beer bottles a Kawasaki FD-50N Palletising Robot and a pallet positioning area. Pallets are manually positioned into the guarded area of the robot cell and the robot accurately positions cartons in a pre-programmed pattern.

A cardboard separator is positioned, by the robot, onto the top of each layer when complete. Full pallets are removed manually and the cycle repeats.

Mark Hammond added: "To meet exacting packaging requirements it is crucial that pallets are packed neatly and consistently – we now achieve this requirement allowing operators to be more productive in less physical tasks."

Basic operator training has been provided to Holden's by Kawasaki Robots and a more advanced programming course will be attended by Holden's in the near future