News

Soft drinks firm Cott Beverages has installed Paxton Products' Powerdry system at its plant in Kegworth near Derby.

The Power Dry system is designed to completely dry the bottles and cans to ensure that date coding is applied correctly.

Alan Krause, maintenance and engineering support manager at Cott Beverages, said water droplets "played havoc" with coding equipment making consistency a problem.

"With the Powerdry system because of the air speed, water is forced off rather than evaporated, and at today's line speeds, is a quicker, cheaper and simpler solution," he added.

The Powerdry system comprises a 2.2kw motor, to power the blower, house in a waterproof HDPE enclosure. Moveable airtubes, attached to a stainless steel arm, connect the motor to the blower.

Paxton has also worked to ensure the machine remains quiet despite operating at high speeds, and said the new machine was totally flexible and quick to install.

Cott decided to install the kit on a new bottling line after it proved to be successful at plants in the US.

The Kegworth plant fills six sizes of PET bottle, from 250ml to 2l, at speeds of up to 36,000 bottles per hour.