PSL Labeller Integration at Fernie Brewing Co.

Nestled between the Rocky Mountains in southeastern British Columbia, Fernie Brewing Co. is located just North of the Fernie Alpine Resort and Town Center. The brewery boasts a tasting room featuring many different styles of beers to choose from plus mead, cider and kombucha. A must try is the Headwall Hazy Pale Ale, a light and citrusy pale ale that delivers enormous flavor with a modest alcohol content of 4.8% and 20 IBU. The tasting room also offers a good selection of Fernie Brewing Co branded glasses, mugs, t-shirts, hats sweaters and more. While visiting the brewery, you’re destined to see friendly locals returning from a day on the hill skiing or mountain biking and thirsty for a refreshing cold beer.

The brewery's 210 Can Per Minute canning line features a Ska Fab Can-I-Bus Depalletizer, KHS Innofil Can C Filler/Seamer, DMM CTC-40 Cartoner, DMM Brewsky 200 Tray Packer, Bevco Twist Rinser and Bevco Conveyors to tie it all together. The Bevco Conveyors feeding the Cartoner feature a hydraulic lift with 4 can lanes for which are easily lowered with a hand crank for mix pack production.

Fernie Brewing Co. approached Bevco and Pacific Packaging Systems Inc to integrate a new labeller into their existing canning line. A number of iterations were explored, and the best option was to angle the labeller at 30 degrees to fit the label reel and labeller in the space provided. A few new conveyor sections were required and the production line had to sacrifice some accumulation to accommodate the labeller. The new labeller will provide Fernie Brewing Co with some additional versatility in the products they can offer with their current caning line. When they are running printed cans, the labeller is set to bypass mode and the cans flow straight through it.

Here is a snippet of the packaging line before the labeller was installed:

Here is a snippet of the production line with the new Labeller installed:

Bevco supplied a new drive and idler end conveyor with deadplates to side transfer cans at the infeed and outfeed of the labeller. The original can line used straight running 8505 chain which was switched to 879 tab side-flexing chain so the chain and cans could travel around curves. This required new wearstrips on a transfer and the decombiner and the existing NS8500 sprockets had to be swapped out for NS880 sprockets.

The Pack Leader Labeller was supplied with a standalone control panel, and aside from moving a couple sensors and an E-Stop, no changes were required for the control system of the Bevco conveyors.

The Installation and start up of this project was carried out over the course of 4 days in January 2023. One  Bevco technician was on site to make the necessary conveyor modifications and one technician from Pack Leader was on site to assist with startup and Labeller Operator training. Startup went smoothly and successful runs at full speed for 16 oz cans were run, both blank cans being labelled and printed cans bypassing through the labeller.