Creamery Puts Labeling Punch Into Juice Pints
Pour derision on West Lynn Creamery by calling it a pint-size beverage firm, and company officials are likely to raise a toast in appreciation.
That's because the West Lynn, Mass., firm fills about 60 million pints a year. The company's "West Lynn Creamery," "Sunny Tropics" and "Crystal Clear" lines run across the spectrum, including fruit punches, orange juice, water, milk, heavy cream and more. Though important, pints are not West Lynn's only packaging: the firm puts beverages in containers that range between 4 oz and 5 gal in size. In total, West Lynn executives estimate that the firm has 2,000 skus. The company also packages ice-cream products, ranging between 3-oz novelty items and 3-gal bulk shipments.
Recently, West Lynn changed the labels on its lines of pint beverages, from sleeve labels to roll-fed labels from Sealright, and installed three labelers from TRINE Labeling Systems. Since West Lynn installed the first labeler last December, the benefits have poured down, including increasing average production speed from 85 bpm to about 275 bpm, reducing materials cost about 60 percent and deploying labor more efficiently. West Lynn Creamery also installed a new Thiele tray packer in March.
In addition to concerns about production, West Lynn sought sharper graphics for its 16-oz beverages. One of the first dairies to introduce a variety of beverages in pint sizes, West Lynn has seen the single-serve-size lines grow "dramatically" over the last eight years and sought upgrades in hopes of assuring ever-increasing returns.
Having quenched its thirst for more efficient production, West Lynn is poised to dispense its pint juice products on more markets in its traditional East Coast stronghold. Plastic pints may not clink, but West Lynn Creamery employees can be forgiven for giving it a try.
Bottleneck in bottling
A bottleneck formed in the packaging operation under the operation of the stretch-sleeve system. The speedy filler from Federal Manufacturing Co. far outpaced the slow sleeve applicator.
"We would have to pre-sleeve a number of bottles before we filled them," recalls Darryl David, purchasing manager. "We couldn't keep up with the filler."
Prior to labeling and filling, HDPE bottles are blow-molded at West Lynn, using a Uniloy blow molder from Johnson Controls. Previously, about a half-million bottles were molded and the stored on an upper floor. When needed, the bottles were poured down a chute and onto a takeaway conveyor, passed through a washer to remove dust and other particulate, and finally conveyed to the packaging area. Some bottles are still stored - in all sizes - to make up for any possible downtime of the blow molder.
In addition to increasing production efficiency, West Lynn wanted to change label graphics on the pint bottles. While the graphics of the sleeve labels were satisfactory, the marketing department sought a more sophisticated appearance by using four-color process printing rather than line art. As Dave Whelan, director of marketing, notes, sharp graphics increasingly figure in a successful marketing plan.
With increasing speed and improving graphics as the goals, David and Whelan began to look at two options: roll-fed polypropylene labels and pressure-sensitive labels.
For the p-s labels, West Lynn investigated a labeler feeding paper labels with a laminate backing. Preprinted, these labels would feed off a traditional unwind for application to the bottles.
"It wasn't conducive for us to go to a paper label," David recalls in rejecting this option. "You cannot meet the speed, and it's not a full wrap: there would have been a gap at the back of the bottle. Another factor in rejecting this option was price."
With that choice exhausted, West Lynn then looked into a roll-fed, glue-applied labeling system and eventually settled on a labeler from TRINE feeding preprinted labels from Sealright Inc.
Label adds sheen
Choosing a label composed of two layers of PP film, West Lynn was able to take advantage of the high-gloss appearance of the materials. According to Ray Pace of Sealright, a clear layer of PP from AET Packaging Films is laminated to the printed PP substrate, yielding a 1.7-mil label. He compared the clear-over-printed-image layering to the placement of glass on a photograph: the sheen and scuff-resistance is accentuated.
Converted at Sealright's Akron, Ohio, facility, the inner film layer is printed on a press from Paper Converting Machinery Co. capable of printing up to eight colors and the laminated to the clear layer. Sealright's Jotto system, capable of printing variable information, can be used for packaging promotions, though West Lynn has not yet tried this feature.
Shipped to West Lynn, rolls with 16,000 labels are ready to be applied to the bottles, as packaging commences. Molded bottles enter the packaging line directly from the blow molder or from storage.
Moving via high-speed overhead conveyors from Automated Productions Systems and Dairy Conveyor Corp., the bottles go into a chute that feeds an unscrambler. The bottles are pointed in all directions - upside down, sideways, skewed - and the Pace unscrambler uprights them. While the straightening process is hidden, David thinks a series of fingers rights the bottles. At last, the unit places the bottles on conveyors that feed to labeling.
Ranging between 50- and 300- bpm speeds, the speed of the labelers depends on the pull of the two fillers downline. Now owning three Quick Change™ 4500 labelers from TRINE, West Lynn has converted about 90 percent of its output of pint sizes to the roll-fed labels.
As a bottle approaches the labeler, a label unwinds off the roll, with proper tension being maintained, and transfers to a rotating cutting mechanism. A rotary knife cuts the label from top to bottom and air sucks the label onto a drum. A nozzle then sprays hot-melt adhesive from H.B. Fuller onto the leading edge of the label.
Meanwhile, a turret spins the bottle as it comes into contact with the glue-bearing edge of the label. The nozzle sprays another line of adhesive on the trailing edge of the label, which wraps around the bottle as the turret spins.
An electronic registration system is programmed to assure that the horizontal placement of the label is always the same. Minor though it is, a difference between the sleeve labeler and the roll-fed labeler is the horizontal placement of the label: it's always the same. With the sleeve system, the label could sidle up or down the body of the bottle during transit, thus appearing sloppy and unkempt. Now bottles have a smarter appearance when stacked next to each other.
Continuing on the conveyor, the bottles reach an ink-jet coder from Videojet Systems International and receive a sell-by date and other coding information.
As bottles approach the two fillers, the line splits, with half of the bottles going to each filler recently reconditioned by Fogg Filler Co. Four bottles are filled simultaneously by each filler, and the two filling lines are timed so that the filled bottles converge again, single file, as they proceed to capping. (West Lynn also has four fillers for gallons and half gallons, as well as two ice cream fillers in a separate facility.)
Labeled and filled, the bottles enter a Cap Snap capper to receive a pull-tab cap, also from Cap Snap. A socket assembly presses the cap onto the bottle, out of the view of onlookers. Consumers can easily open and then reseal the bottle, as the cap fits perfectly over the mouth of the bottle.
A Series 94 continuous motion horizontal tray packer from Thiele, just installed in March, pushes 12 bottles into a corrugated tray made by Stone Container. The bottles spill upright onto a collection table about 10 feet across. The table narrows to about 2 feet, and a paddle emerges to push the bottles, in 3x4 orientation, onto the tray, after which the paddle returns to its original position. Three sides of the tray are already folded into place, so after bottles are pushed through the open side of the tray, an arm lifts the last side into position.
Ink-jet-coded by a Marsh printer, the tray is wrapped in HDPE film from Armin Plastics on an Arpac shrink wrapper.
After a knife cuts the film, the wrapped tray goes through an Arpac heat tunnel for a tight fit. With packaging complete, the trays are stacked on a pallet for storage in a refrigerated room before shipping to distribution centers. Most of the beverages are sold directly to retailers, such as convenience stores, cafeterias, grocery stores, concession stands and similar outlets.
Taste of success
Accounting for all of the advantages accrued by West Lynn, David thinks the new machinery and the change to roll-fed labels was worthwhile and has positioned the firm for growth.
"I find we're doing a better job," David says. "I think we're running that line more efficiently. We're faster, so it forces the rest of the line to be more efficient. I think that's a good exercise for a plant to do."
As previously mentioned, the plant has increased average speed from about 85 bpm to about 275 bpm, with the capability of reaching speeds greater than 300 bpm. Also, changeover of rolls has been halved, as twice as many roll-fed labels are on each roll compared to rolls of sleeve labels.
Though increasing speed was West Lynn's purpose for upsetting its routine, the change in labels has also yielded materials cost savings. According to David, the cost for the roll-fed labels is about $10/1,000 labels - about a third of the cost for labels used with the sleeve system.
Fewer bottles are stored, thus saving storage space and deploying labor more effectively: "When I went up to the storage area the other day, the room was almost empty," says David. "We cut the amount of bottles in storage by more than 50 percent."
More labeling options are also available to West Lynn's co-pack customers, David says. Minute Maid packages pint-size orange juice beverages at West Lynn Creamery, and though the packages are not on the roll-fed line, West Lynn can now offer that option to this customer.
Finally, West Lynn management thinks the firm has now positioned itself not only to keep market share but perhaps to expand it.
"We've accomplished our goal of creating a new look for our plastic pint," says Whelan, of the new label. "And we've positioned ourselves for the upcoming years as one of the dairy industry leaders in the single-serve beverage market."
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