Unique labeller for Mozart Distillerie

The five different chocolate liqueurs are traditionally produced by hand, but bottled automatically. As time went by, however, one machine in particular was giving Mozart more and more headaches: the labeller, meanwhile 30 years old, was custom-built by a special-purpose-machine manufacturer and rated at 1,500 bottles per hour. “Since I joined Mozart 27 years ago, I’ve been tinkering with this machine, trying to improve its productivity and labelling results. Because after so many years on the clock, it was still labelling our spherical bottles, but no longer to the technological or output standards that have meanwhile become state of the art,” explains Friedrich Guggenberger.

It takes time to get things right

During the course of his career at Mozart, the passionate tinkerer Friedrich Guggenberger had already been thinking about how all of these requirements could be met on a single machine – and early in 2017 he finally succeeded in bringing Krones on board for actual implementation. “I’d started to lose hope that I would some day see my ideas translated into engineered reality,” he admits. But Krones accepted the challenge – and combined the long years of practical experience and visions of Friedrich Guggenberger and his team with the technical expertise of its own labelling specialists.

The results are truly impressive – since Mozart has received from Krones a line that meets every single one of the wishes previously expressed.

1. After being filled, the bottles enter the labeller through a double worm. An optical monitoring system then centres them so that the sloping area for the label is facing outward.
2. Thereupon the aluminium-coated paper foil is affixed. To make sure it does not slip, first of all, a dot of hotmelt is sprayed onto the bottle and then the fully glued foil blanks are wrapped around it. For this purpose, Krones is for the first time deploying a combination of one cold-glue and one Contiroll labelling station for wrap-around labels.
3. The next station uses a sponge to press the foil against the sloping area in such a way that afterwards the pressure-sensitive body labels can be applied to the creaseless front of the containers.
4. This is followed by an operation that basically every labeller manufacturer tries to prevent: creasing. For this purpose, Krones developed a patented combination of a servomotor, which turns the bottles, and linear motors, which in twelve press-on operations use sponges to carefully press the foil onto the containers.
5. To enable the foil to be dependably secured at the edge of the base as well, Mozart was already using a small bottle plate in the old line, which raises the containers merely by a recess in the base. This means the edges of the bases remain free and the sponges can fit the foil around the edge. In the discharge, a transfer starwheel then lifts the bottles carefully onto the conveyor. Meanwhile, a Checkmat inspector monitors the base label already applied downstream of the filler for correct position and orientation.
6. The position of the closure cap then applied is also precisely defined. In order to prevent the bottles turning as they travel, Krones has developed a guide rail that transports the bottles with the aid of the sloping label area as an orientation reference point. These rails can be re-adjusted with only a few manipulations, so that all six sizes – from the small 50-millilitre to the large one-litre bottle – can be handled with the same system.

Both Mozart and Krones channelled a lot of energy into the development work. Throughout the project’s entire duration, there were numerous meetings, close cooperation, and intensive mutual feedback between the two companies. “Krones thought hard about how our requirements could be translated into engineered reality, and first of all built a prototype, in which we in turn incorporated our own empirical feedback,” relates Friedrich Guggenberger, who has plenty of praise for everyone concerned: “The people who were involved in design and assembly were so clued up that they immediately grasped all the problems and challenges involved and solved them straight away.”

I know that we had very many requirements for this labeller – but Krones met all of them. And the result is highly impressive; no other manufacturer could have managed it. Friedrich Guggenberger Authorised signatory and Plant Manager of the Mozart Distillerie