Oettinger Brewery: First time with Krones labeller and KIC Krones adhesive

In its headquarters in the Swabian town of Oettingen, the Oettinger Brewery has commissioned its first non-returnable glass line from Krones, with production for export as a major priority. Another new returnable-glass line has been equipped with a Krones labelling machine. In both lines, adhesives by KIC Krones are used right from the start.
A trouble-free operation of the lines was important for the brewery. “If the machines and the adhesive a provided by the same supplier, there is no interface between adhesive producer and machine manufacturer", emphasizes Johann Dietrich, director of the filling department. The performance capabilities of the glue supply are extremely important with the new lines that operate at speeds of 55,000 and 60,000 bph, and even of up to 66,000 bph.
Oettinger is using partly synthetic products mixed with casein. For non-returnable bottles, it is possible to use only partly synthetic products, whereas more experience is gained for the time being concerning returnable bottles. In the returnable-glass line, the company uses the S 4008, an adhesive with higher condensation resistance than the S 4001 processed in the non-returnables line, because the returnable-glass line handles also cold products that are not pasteurised. The returnable-glass line incorporates a conventional Krones labeller type Multimatic with fixed cold-glue stations for normal paper labels. The non-returnables line is equipped with a modular machine, the Krones Multimodul. “A modular machine allows us to react more flexibly to different tasks”, Johann Dietrich addresses the possibility to handle precut labels of different formats so that specially-shaped bottles can also be labelled. The most important point, however, is trouble-free operation: “The line must work. Reliability is the focus. KIC Krones has presented very yielding adhesives that neatly fix the labels.”