Australia: New bottle filler installed at Coopers

Adelaide’s Coopers Brewery has begun installation of a new $3.6 million bottle filler to enable it to continue to meet the growing demand for its beers around Australia and overseas.

The new bottle filler is centerpiece of a $7 million major capital expenditure program by Coopers that has already resulted in the installation of a new keg filler and the purchase of 20,000 additional kegs. At the same time, a new packaging machine will also be installed to enable new types of packaging to be introduced, including baskets.

Installation of the bottle filler, imported from Europe, commenced today with a number of containers being moved by crane into the bottling hall and unpacked. Part of the brewery’s wall had to be removed to enable the machinery to be moved.

Coopers Managing Director, Dr Tim Cooper said that the filler was considered one of the best and fastest of its type in the world.

Installation and testing is expected to take about three weeks, with beer supplies being met in the meantime from a large stockpile built up in previous weeks.

“The old bottling machine had a maximum capacity of 840 bottles a minute (bpm) and was moved to Regency Park from our old brewery at Leabrook,” he said.
“However, it is now unable to keep up with demand. The new bottling machine will initially operate at 1000 bpm, but has the capacity to operate at up to 1200 bpm.”

Dr Cooper said Coopers had been growing at double digit figures since opening the Regency Park brewery in November 2001. Last year Coopers recorded growth of around 17%.
“With that kind of growth, it was obvious that we needed to expand our production capability to meet increasing customer demand,” he said.

Coopers new keg filler, installed in December last year, doubled the previous filler’s capacity from 60 to 120 kegs per hour.

Coopers has about 25% of the South Australian beer market and about 2.5% of the national market. Interstate sales in have been growing at up to 60% in some areas in the past two to three years.

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