Halewood installs high-speed labeller

With the continuing growth of the Halewood International wine brands, the company – one of the UK's largest independent drinks manufacturers and distributors – required a new high speed modular labelling machine. The labeller needed to be able to apply both wet glue and self adhesive labels to ROPP closure sparkling wines and cork and wire Champagne style bottles in a variety of sizes including 75cl, 1 litre and 1.5 litre.

While the majority of Halewood's existing filling line has been retained, a new, more exacting, labeller was required. After careful evaluation of the labelling machine market, Halewood International again opted for a Makro labeller. In this instance, the modular labeller is equipped with three stations and comes equipped with Plug and Play removable labelling stations for both wet glue and self-adhesive label applications.

The newly installed machine will be dressing Halewood's Chaumet Sparkling Wine, Bucks Fizz, Lambrini Bubbly and standard Lambrini products with front, back and shoulder labels at speeds up to 14,000 bottles/hour.

Richard Portman, managing director of Makro Labelling UK said, "This further acquisition by Halewood International is the largest and fastest machine we have installed in the UK to-date. It includes a number of patented Makro features including the Makro ‘Magic Star’ multiple format handling starwheel system and Universal scroll, that save a huge amount of time and money for customers where the same items can be used for up to three bottle sizes. In this case we have built the machine to handle five different bottle formats with ten label dress variants, which need only a single scroll and two sets of ‘magic star’ starwheels to handle the lot. The modular nature of the machine offers the customer the best of both worlds of wet glue and self-adhesive bottle dress, which essentially means that production and engineering can cope with anything that a marketing department will demand in the future."

The contract also called for the newly appointed Makro UK Field Service Team to handle all the mechanical and electrical installation, commissioning and training for the Halewood International production and maintenance personnel.

Makro installation team

1 February 2012 - Felicity Murray