The CanPro filling-seaming system from Splatt Engineering, recently installed at Hawkers Brewery, offers high speed can control and flexibility. PKN went to see the system in situ.
For Mazen Hajjar, founder of Hawkers Brewery, packaging his multi-award winning beers into cans was never going to happen if it meant compromising quality in any way. And that's why he waited until his plant equipment supplier, Splatt Engineering, found the right solution.
After considerable research by Splatt Engineering team, that solution arrived in the form of the CanPro, which the food and beverage engineering company describes as a "high-speed, mechanically controlled can filling system designed around proven European counter-pressure-gravity filling and can seaming technology".
The CanPro filler incorporates a highly engineered, rotary, high-speed, precision can seaming system that produces perfectly seamed cans while minimising oxygen pick-up and product loss. The seaming machine is integrated into the can filling system with a common-base design and a high-speed tangential can discharge ensuring optimal high speed can control and superior product integrity.
The CanPro installation at Hawkers is the first in Australia, although Splatt Engineering has a second CanPro system lined up and ready for installation at another craft brewery.
The shift to cans marks a growing trend among craft brewers, enabled by technology advances that have increased flexibility on the packaging line, provided entry level, small footprint machinery, and reduced the cost of printing short runs of cans.
For Hajjar, it's not about choosing metal over glass, and certainly the Hawkers bottled range is successful and will continue. "I'm not following any market trend," Hajjar says. "We care about getting our product into the hands of consumers, and having the packaging format that's most convenient for the drinking occasion. In a bar or restaurant it may be glass, on the side of a sportsfield or camping it's a can. As long as it's always Hawkers."
Commenting on the CanPro's suitability for craft brewers, Leighton Splatt, marketing and sales manager at Splatt Engineering, says the system is designed to fill beer in a variety of can sizes and volumes offering today’s craft brewers a wide range of flexibility.
"It is not limited to beer though, and can do both still and carbonated products as well," he says.
Filling speeds on the CanPro range from 80 cans per minute with (355ml cans) up to 600 cans per minute, while delivering precise fill levels, low oxygen pick-up and minimal product loss.
"The system installed at Hawkers is marketed as achieving 5500 cans per hour, but we're actually achieving 6300 per hour," says Splatt, and Hajjir backs that up.
Along with the filling and seaming line, Splatt Engineering has supplied a high level depalletiser and can twist rinser.
The company has partnered with Hawkers Brewery since its inception three years ago, and has been responsible for the entire plant installation, which Hajjar estimates amounts to an investment of over $7 million thus far.
The brewery has won over 62 awards to date, including Supreme Champion Brewer at the prestigious International Beer Challenge in London in 2016.
Hajjir credits the company's packaging for a large part of its success.
"Packaging equipment is by far more important to us than the brewhouse side of the business," he says. "You can make world award-winning beers... but it doesn't matter how great that beer is if your packaging line fails, if you cannot get the beer to the consumer in the best possible condition."
Hajjir continues: "We can't control the storage of beer after it leaves our premises. Therefore we have invested heavily in our packaging lines because we want to give our beer the best possible chance to get to the consumer in the best condition possible."
You can see the line in action at Hawkers Brewery and hear more from Hajjir here:
PKN will report on Hawkers Brewery as part of our craft beverage packaging feature in the March-April print edition.
