production process

operation type

product format

Privacy Policy

User Agreement

Terms of Service

Default Confirmation

If too long

This form auto replies from Zendesk on submission
on Trigger ID: tbc
https://vekamafsupport.zendesk.com/agent/admin/triggers

Admin Notification

New submission from {form_title}

Messages backup

Notify Teammedia of submission

Submission from Making.com Ad Campaign

Maker - Product Challenge

Products

Technologies

About us

Changemakers

Bottling

Canning

Capping

Cartoning

Fermentation

Let’s make craft beer

The US Brewers Association estimates that the average American lives within 15 kilometers of a craft brewery. Although small in scale, these breweries are big on quality and rely on advanced craft beer making equipment to perfect their unique methods. Beer-making has a proud history, and craft brewers dig deep into the tradition to bring innovative alternatives to the market.

Craft beer

As simple as its own ingredients, the grain-hops-yeast trifecta along with water are the big four ingredients for making beer. The beer-making process is known as brewing and involves several steps like milling, mashing, lautering, boiling, and fermentation.

Beer

Energy drinks have come a long way since the tangy, fizzy products popularized in the 1990s. The beverage category today is responding to wellness trends by reducing sugars and adding vitamins. But the basis for making energy drinks remains caffeine anhydrous, which acts as a stimulant. Unique recipes are finished with an array of ingredients, from herbal extracts to taurine to flavorings. Pasteurize the water-based mixture to eliminate microbial growth and extend the drink’s shelf-life.

Energy drinks

Mpac Group is an industry leader in packaging automation, cartoning, and case-packing technologies.

Small footprint (6.5’ L x 5.8’ W x 6’ H)

Corrosion-resistant frame and components

Quick changeover between formats

Accommodates different can profiles and packaging formats

Caster wheels allow portability

Cans have many advantages over bottles when it comes to packing, for example, your craft beer. Having a flexible automatic cartoning system for your different beer types and cases will significantly improve your process efficiency. Smaller scale manufacturers now also opt for an upgrade in their production line to efficiently erect, load and close their carton packaging.


<h2>Pack your craft beer cans into cartons automatically</h2>
The Switchback BRC-1, from Mpac Langen, is an automated carton packaging system for canned beverages such as beer, coffee, and energy drinks. The packing system has compact dimensions and is equipped with caster wheels for portability and leveling legs. A robotic arm gently handles the carton to open and close the packaging while a belted conveyor loads the cans via a pneumatic actuator. It can accommodate different can sizes, such as slim, sleek, or standard, and can pack them in 4, 6, 8, 9, or 12 formats with a maximum throughput of about 5 cartons per minute. The cartoner has a stainless steel frame and components for corrosion resistance and easy cleaning.

Horizontal Beverage Can Cartoner

Packaging

Food

Batch

Industrial canning is an important packaging step within the food processing industry for items such as beverages and tinned products. Automatic dosing and weighing systems portion out your product before distributing it into separate cans. A can seamer then folds the lid over the flange of the container, hermetically sealing the can. Some manufacturers opt for an additional plastic cap allowing consumers to re-close the can after the lid would have been peeled off.

Cartoning involves erecting a folded carton, filling it with the product, closing the flaps, or applying a lid and sealing with glue or adhesive tape. Choosing a cartoning solution involves, considering the type of primary packaging, the production volume, the size and count of the product in a carton, and the desired level of automation.

<span style="font-weight: 400">At last, you reached the final stage of processing your product - welcome to the packing world! Packing preserves and protects a product from damage, spoilage, and contamination while it makes its way from the production line to the consumer or further production. Depending on which industry your products belong to, the type of primary packaging equipment can change drastically. You need to pay careful attention to products with </span><span style="font-weight: 400">chemicals or hazardous substances since they can be potentially dangerous to human health. </span>

Packing

A beverage is any kind of liquid or drink, usually other than water, made for human consumption. Beverages are further classified into two categories: alcoholic beverages and non-alcoholic beverages. Alcoholic beverages refer to liquids that contain 1% to 75% of liquor and are produced by fermentation such as wine, beer, or distillation such as vodka, rum, tequila. Non-alcoholic beverages are drinks that don’t have any liquor such as tea, coffee, fruit juices, soft drinks, and carbonated beverages. They can be produced premix or postmix, depending on the setup of your production line.

Beverages

Our food chain starts in the soil, growing crops and livestock. But between the fields and the stores, there is a line of industrial food processing equipment. Processes may be as minimalistic as cleaning fruit and as complex as homogenizing milk alternatives made from pressed legumes. In each case, processing technology is an important link in the food production chain.

liquid

Bottling equipment draws a measured quantity of your drink, food, or formulation from a holding tank and fills it into bottles. These bottles usually need to be checked, capped, labeled, and sealed for distribution. Bottling solutions differ in product metering system, sterilization level, and bottle type and sealing system depending on your production scale and product format and regulations. Bottling systems are utilized in a variety of industries. For example, in the food and beverage industry as well as in cosmetics and pharma.

When looking for capping equipment, it is crucial to know first which type of capper your product requires. Do you want screw caps, twist-off caps, hand pumps, or push-pull caps on your bottle or container? If you require different cap types for format changeover times can be time-consuming. The bottle cap seals the top opening of a bottle to guard the product against leakage and spoilage and sterility and filling requirements depend on the nature of your product.

The fermentation process stimulates enzymatic activity in organic substrates to transform their chemical composition. Fermentation is aided by storying the biomaterials in anaerobic environments, allowing the microorganisms to decompose their nutrient structures. The process is integral to some of the most popular products throughout time such as wine, beer, cheese, and kimchi. But besides the food sector, fermentation is also an important stage in the industrial manufacturing of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and biofuels.

A sealed can of beer is the ultimate satisfaction for a craft brewer. But what’s better than a can of beer? A full case ready for the retail shelf. It marks the beginning of a brewing success story, and when cartoning reaches 40 cans per minute, you know you’ve reached your tipping point.

However, as beer packs increase, so do the cartoning challenges. Growing capacity means bringing more hands on deck or investing in an automated system.

Manual operation may have a lower initial cost, but labor costs quickly add up. Moreover, while direct human control allows closer monitoring, automatic cartoners ensure higher consistency. On the whole, machines bring a steady hand.

But automation has a cost too. Mechanical processes open the door to operational and maintenance issues that put the viability of 40 cpm threshold into question.


<h3>Growing by keeping it small</h3>
Small brewers would cheer for a system that combines the simplicity of manual operation with the accuracy of automated systems.

“This need is peculiar to craft brewers,” says Dave Shepherd, president of Mpac Switchback. “Like all businesses, breweries want to expand, but production typically remains around 3,000 barrels a year.”

Backed by decades of experience in beer can cartoning, Dave’s team went on to innovate a solution that achieves both. The Mpac system provides the precision of a machine but without its mechanical complexities.
<h3>A robotic arm lends a hand</h3>
Conventional technology designed for higher speeds involves separate units for erecting, filling, and closing boxes, apart from the intricate tracks connecting them. The Mpac engineers went back to the drawing board and rebuilt a system around a robotic arm that guides the carton every step of the way.

The platform simplifies the cartoning process while perfectly matching the volume requirements of small breweries. Dave explains how the robotic arm eliminates a layer of complexity: “We managed to replace a whole series of electromechanical tools with a single, low-maintenance device.”

40 cpm is a significant breakthrough, but brewers do not need to complicate their line just to keep up with the cartoning demands. The helpful robotic arm takes your production from tipping point to sipping point without mechanical hangovers.

Advantage craft breweries: robots take the frothiness out of cartoning

Find production technology for making Craft beer and connect directly to a global network of leading machine suppliers.

Find production technology for making Craft beer, and connect directly with leading machine manufacturers worldwide

Let’s make craft beer

Which craft beer equipment do you need?

Horizontal Beverage Can Cartoner

There is currently no equipment listed with your specified properties, but we are sure we can help you. Try us!Contact us

Stories about Craft beer

Tell us about your production challenge

Let's talk about your project!

Related technologies