BOTTLING LINE COST $1.2M

Press, 4 August 1976, Page 17

BOTTLING LINE COST $1.2M

The automatic bottling line at the new brewery was manufactured and installed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, of Japan, at a cost of $1.2 million. The line has a capacity of 440 quart bottles a minute. It handles the bottles from start to finish. It takes returned bottles from their crates, washes them

and inspects them for cleanliness, then fills, caps and labels, pasteurises the bottles and crates and palletises them ready for storage. The Japanese company w’as widely experienced in the bottling and handling equipment field of the beverage industry, Mr J. McC. Fitzgerald, director of Ltd, said. It supplied all

Mitsubishi New Zealand the equipment of the giant Kirin Breweries, Japan’s biggest brewery company and the second largest brewery organisation in the world, "it was also closely associated with Coca Cola’s operations in Japan and had been a major supplier of bottling plant to SouthEast Asian countries. The contract for the bottling line w’as signed in

April last year and the components of the complete line, mainly preassembled, were delivered in a specially chartered ship to Timaru last March. Brightlings Express Transport, of Christchurch, handled transport to the site and put the main machinery components into position. Ridler and Murray, of Auckland, a division of Mauri Brothers and

Thomson, completed the mechanical installation and the electrical work was done by T. L. Jones and Son, of Christchurch. Mitsubishi sent a team of seven engineers, led by Mr Akihiro Kashima and , his assistant, Mr Takeshi | Tsutsumi, to work with the I New Zealand contractors, “The whole project went through with barely a hitch,” Mr Fitzgerald said. “The smoothness of the operation was largely due to the preparatory' work done in Japan, even down to the daily achievement which could be expected.” The plant was tested in Japan with New Zealand bottles, crates and cartons.