The West Berkshire Brewery is building what is believed to be one of the UK’s most flexible and highest-quality beer packaging lines.
The automated line is being installed as part of a £5.5m development of a new state-of-the-art brewery and packaging facility at the site in West Berkshire, just off the M4.
The new packaging line, built by industry leaders CFT of Parma, Italy, is rated to fill 9,000 330ml bottles or 12,000 330ml cans every hour. The line is flexible enough to allow a run to be packaged into four different bottle varieties or three different can sizes, as well as being racked into keg or cask. Larger runs have even greater flexibility, allowing customers incredible choice when it comes to how they want their beer packaged.
The top-spec labeller offers multiple label configurations on bottles, and cans are labelled prior to filling to ensure a premium quality finish.
At the heart of the facility will be quality control, with Heuft control units to ensure that the packaging is faultless and an on-site laboratory which will run full micro-analysis before and after filling to guarantee an excellent finished product.
The minimum run will be 30 hectolitres or 9,090 330ml bottles. This small volume will allow brewers to prototype new beers, and customers such as restaurant chains and supermarkets to launch their own beer brands. Beer can be brewed for customers at the brewery, or brewed by the client and transported to the brewery for finishing and packaging.
West Berkshire Brewery chief executive, Simon Lewis, said: “This amazing new facility is going to transform the packaging options currently available in this country to brewers of all sizes. Our new facilities can cater for large and small volumes with equal ease, offering unrivalled quality control and flexibility whatever the size of brew.
“For those customers interested in creating bespoke lines of beer, we will be able to work with them to create the beers that truly represent their brand, offering superb brewing, packaging and labelling facilities and quality control before and after packaging in our on-site lab to ensure consistency. We will be up and running by late autumn of this year and are already receiving significant interest from potential customers — the West Berkshire Brewery has an exciting future ahead.”
