Iconic Italian beer brand Birra Peroni has upgraded its glass bottling capacity with a new complete glass line from Sidel.
Peroni, owned by Asahi Group, accounted for more than 20 per cent of the Italian market last year, including both its domestic Peroni brand and its special Nastro Azzurro lager. This success, as well as exports to the US and UK, meant that Peroni needed to increase production capacity at its Bari plant in southern Italy – the only Peroni plant that handles both returnable and one-way glass bottles.
According to Michele Cason, plant manager at Birra Peroni, the Bari plant runs at full capacity from January to November, and Sidel was a natural choice to help it meet demand.
“Faced with the need to expand our capacity, we used it as an opportunity for rationalising the handling of returnable glass bottles (RGB), applied to the Peroni brand. Therefore, we enlarged the RGB production in our Bari plant.
“Since the 1980s, we have installed various bottling lines from Sidel and this choice has paid back many times,” he said.
The new line includes the Sidel EvoFill Glass, which has a hygienic, no-base design, as well as level probe electronic filling valves which Sidel says ensure high accuracy while managing a wide range of filling set points with no adjustment or replacement of parts; this was important to Peroni’s Bari plant, which handles five different formats.
Also included is the EvoDeco cold glue labeller; a (de-)crater; an EvoFlex (de-)palletiser; bottle and crate washers; a Swing pasteuriser; a cap feeder; bottle dryers; a packer; and conveying systems for bottles, crates, and packs.
Luca Ianelli, Sidel Sales Manager for Southern Europe, said the project highlights the valuable relationship between Sidel and Peroni.
“Our partnership approach is grounded in our comprehensive set of capabilities. From customised solutions, which materialised Peroni’s requirements, up to 360-degree support all along the line lifecycle, we exploited our four complementary areas of expertise: engineering, line design, integration, and equipment manufacturing,” said Ianelli.
The turnkey line now runs at 50,000 bottles per hour, and needs only four operators; this demonstrates the value of the Sidel solution, said Antonio Martalò, packaging panager at Birra Peroni.
“By choosing Sidel as our partner we realised productivity gains and massive flexibility improvements. Not less important, we can now scale our production set-up according to the market needs.
“The project execution was absolutely smooth thanks to the continuous support offered by their team and their expertise in turnkey solutions for the beer industry,” he said.
