In September 2004, GEA Process Engineering were awarded the contract to design, supply and install the process equipment for a new glass manufacturing and bottling facility at Elton in Cheshire.
The project formed part of a major investment in a greenfield facility by the Quinn Group, a well established company based in Northern Ireland. The concept of the new operation is to offer supply of the glass bottles and a filling and packaging facility at a single location, as a “one stop shop” for the beverage market. Quinn Glass Elton is one of only a handful of plants worldwide and the only one in the UK, that manufactures and fill glass bottles at the same site.
Rather than transport empty bottles to their customers many sites around the UK, Quinn has the capability to receive customers product in road tankers at high gravity and process these to packaging strength prior to filling on site. In addition to avoiding transport of empty containers, it also gives the opportunity for importers of wine from the New World to ship product in bulk, for bottling and subsequent sale on the UK market – this has significant commercial, but also environmental advantages.
The GEA scope of supply covered the full range of process steps ; tanker receipt, filtration, bulk storage, dilution and blending, syrup room, deaerated water supply, carbonation, product transfer to fillers, and all CIP requirements.
The range of products processed includes ; wines, beers, ciders, spirits, FABs (fruit based alcoholic beverages) and soft drinks.
Timescales were critical from the outset, with building construction scheduled for completion by May 2005, with first product commissioning in October. Despite some delays in construction caused by the “fine” British weather, the GEA team worked closed with the Quinn project team, to ensure the original timescale was met, and the first bottling run of wine (an Australian Chardonnay) successfully took place on October 26th 2005.
Since then commissioning of the full process plant, supporting all five high speed bottling lines has been successfully completed, processing a full range of beverage products for a wide range of customers including major brewers, UK supermarkets and wine importers.