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Quintuplets!

New automated labeling system delivers five labels onto each glass bottle of Labrot & Graham’s premium bourbon whiskey, boosting output, reducing labor costs and improving placement accuracy.

At the first labeling station, a strip stamp label is applied over the top of the bottle (top). Small labels are used to show of
At the first labeling station, a strip stamp label is applied over the top of the bottle (top). Small labels are used to show of

Labrot & Graham Distillers now ships between 800 and 1ꯠ cases a day when it produces its premium Woodford Reserve Distiller’s Select bourbon whiskey. That’s quite an improvement compared to its previous output of 200/day. Along with the output increase, the distiller also reduced its labor costs and turnaround time. How?

By employing a custom pressure-sensitive labeling system that includes five applicators to automatically apply a p-s label to the front, back, side, neck and over the cap of each glass bottle. Designed and manufactured by CTM Integration (Salem, OH), the labeling machinery operates at Labrot & Graham’s Versailles, KY, plant. Labrot & Graham is a subsidiary of Brown-Forman Corp.

Labrot & Graham was referred to CTM by label distributor MPI Label Systems (Sebring, OH), a distributor of CTM machinery. The new labeler was installed last year, as was: a “bar-top” corker from Bertolaso, an Italian supplier represented in the U.S. by fp Packaging (Napa, CA); a Belcor (Richmond, British Columbia, Canada) case taper; and a Markem (Keene, NH) case coder. Newer still is an ink-jet bottle coder from Willett America (Ft. Worth, TX). All this equipment runs on one line at the recently restored Versailles plant (see “plant renovation” sidebar, p. 41).

Bottles are filled on a refurbished rotary filler that operates at speeds of 25 to 29 bpm for 375-mL, 700-mL, 750-mL and 1-L sizes of Woodford Reserve. The premium brand was introduced in ’96. The company’s master distiller hand-selected bourbon “stock” for the brand, then set it aside for its seven-year aging process.

The operating rate makes it clear that speed isn’t a primary concern for this high-priced, low-volume product line, though that’s changing. Speed is further limited because the premium spirit is bottled from tank batches of no more than 1겨 gallons. Another factor: Running the filler at faster speeds would likely reduce filling accuracy.

What is a concern to Labrot & Graham is how efficiently batches can be bottled to meet orders, which grew to 18ꯠ cases last year. Trouble-free labeling of the bottles is how the CTM system earns its keep.

“In the past, we had a machine that applied cold-glue labels to the front and back of the bottle,” explains Dave Scheurich, plant manager and master distiller at Versailles. “Then we’d put those bottles in cases by hand, bring the cases to another work area, empty bottles from the cases and apply the other three labels to each bottle manually before placing the bottles back in the case.

“We double-handled bottle labeling because it’s important to first empty the filler and run the bottles for that batch,” he continues. “If you leave whiskey in the filler or tank for days on end, [evaporation can cause] the proof to drop below what the government allows, and then you’ve got a big problem,” he says.

Not only was the process labor-intensive, it was also messy. “The older labeler used a ‘jelly-gum glue’ that was cold and wet,” Scheurich recalls. “Glue would be transferred from one roller to another roller that applied it to the label. People would get glue on their fingers and sometimes transfer it to the surface of the bottle, and the bottle would have to be cleaned off. Quality-wise, hand-labeling left a lot to be desired, and the placement of the labels wasn’t always the same.”

Touring the line

“We receive pallet loads of bottles that are packed into reshipper cases upside-down so that when we hand-dump them, they’re right-side-up on a feed table,” says Scheurich. The reshippers are provided by the vendor of the custom glass bottles. (See materials sidebar on opposite page.)

The front of the bottle has the “LG” symbol molded in just below the neck, and an applied ceramic labeling (ACL) decoration below that. Both necessitate proper bottle orientation for downstream label placement.

Bottles are conveyed from the feed table four at a time, in single-file, onto a plastic, belted conveyor. A blast of air and vacuum are used to clean bottles before they reach what Scheurich describes as a nine-head rotary vacuum filler. When the fill level is reached, a vacum is drawn in the fill tube to prevent overfilling.

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