ACMI was commissioned by Heineken Italia to design, build and install the depalletisation and palletisation zone of a new keg line at the Comun Nuovo factory, in the province of Bergamo (Italy).

The kegs returning from the Ho.re.ca. channel are loaded, by means of a forklift truck, on special roller conveyors placed in the external area which have the task of conveying the pallets into the structure on which the filling and packaging line is installed. The first machine of the line is the destacker, a specially designed system which has the task of unstacking the pallets of empty kegs.

The pallets consist of four layers with six kegs each, for a total of twenty-four kegs. Given the dimensions and the considerable weight of the kegs, each layer rests on a pallet which has the function of enabling the pack destacking phase. This is one big difference compared to a PET line, in which the layers are usually separated by cardboard interlayers. It is clear that the weights involved in a keg line are definitely greater and this requires the machines to be extraordinarily robust.

RASAR D180 DEPALLETISER

The Rasar D180 depalletiser has a gripping head specifically designed to handle beer kegs. Each machine cycle transfers a complete layer of six kegs. The line handles 20L. and 30L. kegs with a rated speed of 1,000 kegs per hour. This results in a palletisation and depalletisation speed of 1,350 pieces/hour.

PALLET CONTROL

While the depalletised kegs are transferred to the conveyors to begin the washing and filling process, the empty pallets are conveyed to the palletiser passing through a control system which checks their structural integrity. The pallet control system operates two stores, the first one stores the unsuitable pallets, while the second one stores the pallets that are suitable to feed the Rasar P180 palletiser.

RASAR P180 PALLETISER

The Rasar P180 palletiser is characterized by a dual infeed, the main infeed is dedicated to full kegs coming from the line, while the secondary, or subordinate, infeed is reserved for kegs that were considered unsuitable by the control system. Thanks to this special configuration, the machine efficiently performs two functions. The first function is to palletise the full kegs which are then transferred to the stacker, the second function is to palletise the unsuitable kegs which are stored in a dedicated warehouse. To ensure the requested palletisation speed, the bad kegs cannot exceed 5% of the total keg infeed. Beyond this threshold, in fact, the palletiser would not be able to guarantee the running speed required to absorb all the kegs coming from the line.