As part of its winter programme the BBI has again visited Quinn Glass at Elton Cheshire. The previous visit undertaken during 2006 was oversubscribed and again this visit was well attended.
The visit was hosted by Daniel Foster, Filling Hall Operations Manager, and Steve Bond, Operations Manager of the Glass Production Unit. Both Daniel and Steve gave members an interesting presentation on their respective areas of the business which covered a description of the facilities on site and the current site performances.

Quinn Glass site at Elton

The 13 glass production lines at Elton are now in full production and the combined projection for 2008 including Quinn’s first plant at Derrylin in Ireland is to produce approximately 2.4 billion containers.
The latest pride and joy in the glass blowing area is the Quad Gob glass forming machine which has recently been commissioned and was working exceptionally well on our visit.
The two 600 tonne glass furnaces are very impressive. They are controlled at a temperature of approximately 1,300°C and are of the regenerative type.

During our tour of the plant Steve explained how important pollution control is for the exhaust from these furnaces. The plant uses a single stack fed from both furnaces and Quinn glass have installed an SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) unit in combination with a 3 stage electrostatic precipitator. The SCR unit was installed to reduce the NOx (nitrogen oxides) emissions from the plant to levels well below a government specified level. Waste gases are passed through the SCR unit before being vented to the atmosphere. During the process NOx is reduced to molecular nitrogen and water vapour through a reaction with ammonia (the reacting agent) and titanium oxide (the catalyst). This process reduces the amount of NOx in the flue gas to a level much lower than many other processes.

The Automated Warehouse is now in full operation and provides storage capacity in the region of 282,000 Chep style pallets using 24 stacker cranes supplied by Stöcklin. This facility handles, during peak periods, an input of around 340 pallets per hour and, simultaneously, up to 365 pallets per hour are being removed from storage, 240 of which are directed to the despatch areas. Both empty containers and full goods are stored in the warehouse. To give an idea of scale the stacker cranes are 33m high and are each dedicated to an individual 290m long crane aisle.

The Bottling Hall now has all five filling lines fully in operation. Each of the lines is serviced by A.G.V.s supplying raw material and removing finished goods to the automated warehouse. The lines have a capability of filling wine, beer, spirits and soft drinks, and can apply screw caps or corks on a range of bottle sizes between 33cl and 1 litre. The line equipment is mainly of Krones manufacture and line speeds vary between 60,000 b.p.h.for 33cl bottles and 24,000 b.p.h.for 75cl bottles with the capacity for both self adhesive and wet glue labels to be applied on all lines. Facilities also include in bottle pasteurisation.

This Integrated packaging facility has a need for a high capacity Processing Plant and there are 24 stainless steel tanks for storage of wine and spirits with a capacity of 720,000 litres. An additional 28 stainless steel tanks can store in excess of a million litres of beer, Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages, and soft drinks. All these vessels are insulated to maintain temperature with CO2 and NO2 top gases.

The Quinn Glass operation at Elton is a “state of the art” operation and Quinn are to be congratulated for building one of the most advanced drinks facilities in Europe. The scale of this operation is massive, and again the BBI are indebted to Quinn Glass for allowing our members to revisit their operation. Quinn Glass kindly provided us with an excellent buffet and a networking opportunity.

Brian Gibbs, BBI Visits Coordinator rounded off proceedings by thanking Daniel and Steve for an extremely interesting visit, after congratulating them on their fast growth and achievements to date.

A report on our previous visit to Quinn Glass, Elton is posted in this BBI News section.
Visit Quinn Glass website....... http://www.quinn-glass.com

Brian Gibbs