Rinsing, Filling and Capping Food and Beverage Products

When it comes to the Food and Beverage Industry, companies require a wide range of packaging machinery.  The multitude of products found in the industry vary in consistency or viscosity and can include unique factors that make packaging products a challenge.  However, almost every food and beverage packaging system will require rinsing, filling and capping of the product.  Today we will look at each of these processes in kind and discuss some of the options available at each stage of the packaging process.

When dealing with ingested products like foods or beverages, rinsing machines help to keep the packaging process sanitary.  Foods and beverages must not only make it into the intended bottle or other container, but they must do so without picking up or being combined with dust, debris or other contaminants along the way.  Bottle rinsers and bottle vacuums help to remove debris from containers before the product is introduced.  Using either a blast of air, a water rinse or a rinse with some other cleaning solution, the inside of the containers will be cleaned to remove build up from the production of the bottles, from transportation or from simply sitting in storage awaiting the production run.  Bottle rinsers may invert containers over a rinse basin or the air blast may be combined with a vacuum to remove the debris.  These packaging machines are available as automatic machines or in semi-automatic models that require operator assistance to place and remove bottles with each cycle.

Different filling machines may be used for varying viscosities, for unique product attributes or for a simple desired fill type, and in the Food and Beverage Industry almost every filler type can be found.  Water and other free-flowing beverages may take advantage of the fill-to-a-level overflow filler, especially if packaged in a clear container.  Food pastes and sauces may be of a thicker viscosity, or may even contain particulates or chunks of product.  These edibles may take advantage of a pump or piston filler to efficiently complete the filling process.  Filling equipment can also be manufactured to function in an automated fashion, or can be built as semi-automatic machinery, including tabletop versions when space is limited.

The type of capping machine used for any packaging project will depend on the type of cap being used for that project.  As noted above, a wide variety of products make up the Food and Beverage Industry, so many different capping machines can be found on packaging lines for the industry.  That being said, the most popular machines for the Food and Beverage Industry are those that handle screw on type caps, including spindle cappers and chuck capping machines.  Capping equipment for screw on type caps can handle simple flat caps, sports caps, flip top caps and many others.  Other machinery seen in the industry may include snap cappers, ROPP cappers, bartop corkers and more.  Like other equipment, capping machinery can be manufactured to handle automatic production or, for lower production facilities, semi-automatic and tabletop models are available.  

 

The key to efficiently packaging foods and beverages is to choose the correct rinser, filler and capper for the specific project at hand.  The analysis will include the product itself, the containers being used, the production demand, the desires of the packager as well as many other factors.  Of course, additional equipment may be necessary to complete the packaging process, such as labelers, neck banders, power conveyors and more.  Our packaging specialists have extensive experience dealing with food and beverage products and are more than willing to assist with questions or concerns.  Simply click the link to see a few of the popular machines used in the Food and Beverage Industry.