As part of the 2008 Events programme the BBI recently visited The Glenmorangie Company’s combined headquarters and bottling plant at Broxburn, West Lothian, just outside of Edinburgh, Scotland.

As well as touring the site the purpose of the visit was to view the new production line on which bottling of the Glenmorangie, Glen Moray and Ardbeg brands takes place. The visit was hosted by Chas McEwan, Engineering Manager, and Chas started proceedings by giving a very informative and interesting presentation.

Chas explained that the company was established in 1893 as Macdonald & Muir located at Leith, Edinburgh. The Company moved to the site at Broxburn in 1996. In 2004 ownership of the Company changed to LVMH (Louis Vuitton • Moët Hennessy)

In September 2007 the Company unveiled its “New World” range of Glenmorangie with the aim of transforming the brand into the world’s Leading Luxury Single Malt whisky brand. This launch included the redesign of their whisky and packaging which had to be noticeably different.

The Broxburn site as well as being the Head Office is the fully integrated whisky, spirit and liqueur production facility. It has a capacity of 3 million cases per annum with a warehouse capacity of 500,000 cases as well as warehousing for over 400,000 casks.

As part of the rebranding the need for a high capacity up to date production line was identified and was named as the “Caledonian Line”. This line is a World Class production facility within a clean, sustainable, controllable working environment. The line to be able to effectively handle tapered bottles with one contact point, as well as a variety of bottle shapes. It also needed to be capable of producing oriented capsules, and handle both single containers and cartoned products. The Caledonian Line was then designed to minimise bottle to bottle contact and accumulation, to run at 250bpm, producing 15,000 bottles/hr, producing visually perfect luxury products with full traceability.

With this specification a new line was installed and commissioned during June 2007 the project being managed by MBF. The commissioning coincided with the Global Launch of 6 new Glenmorangie products in 4 different sizes worldwide and these products were launched in the market by September 2007 with over 300 new SKUs having been produced.

The environmental conditions for the new line have been greatly enhanced, with dedicated Heating & Air Conditioning providing filtered air and positive pressure inside the bottling hall. A new lighting system has been installed together with heavy duty resin floor.

On our tour of the site BBI members were very impressed by the new Caledonian Line facilities. The new line has been built around MBF Electronic Filler, with a Rinser and Corker fitted as a block. A Berchi depalletiser supplies empty bottles and full cases are stacked on a Cermex palletiser. The line is a traditional U shape with plenty of space for materials movement. Labels are applied on a PE executive self adhesive labeller and bottles are packed into a Samovi Ricart case wrapper with division insertion. At the end of the line there is an ever-present Robopac pallet wrapper.

Chas explained during our tour that the project had a very tight timescale. There was a very close partnership with all suppliers as well as excellent project management by MBF, the period from order to delivery being 7 months.

We were also able to appreciate the need for extensive warehousing. The Glemorangie Company store around 400,000 casks on site and 48 million litres of alcohol are processed in their whisky supply chain per annum. This equates to 300,000 cask movements hence the warehousing is well laid out with systems for product identity and traceability as the product matures in cask.

It was also interesting to see Cooperage being practised on site, American White Oak, Ex-Bourbon Casks, Oloroso Sherry Casks, Ruby Port Casks and Sauterne Wine Casks are all used in their single malt processes.

On conclusion of the visit BBI Scottish Coordinator, Colin Clelland, thanked our hosts for a splendid visit, their hospitality, and complimented Chas McEwan on the excellent presentation. The impression gained from our visit is that the team at Broxburn are proud of the new facilities at their factory and also the development of their “New World” brands which are achieving high standards of quality, taste and appeal.

The visit was well attended and gave members of the BBI a much appreciated opportunity to view a whisky production operation that is expert in managing the complexity of different packaging configurations for brands in order to fulfil their customer requirements. The BBI also would like to express thanks to Glenmorangie for their continued support of the Institute.

Visit LVMH website ....... http://www.lvmh.com
Visit MBF website ....... http://www.mbf.it
Visit Aetna website for Robopac ....... http://www.aetna.co.uk

Brian Gibbs