CALGARY, Alberta — Cask Global Canning Solutions, the company that invented micro-canning equipment for craft brewers, is offering a new canning line.
Cask’s new Micro-Automated Canning System (mACS) features advanced fill technology, the seaming reliability of Cask’s ACS X2, and the compact footprint and maneuverability of Cask’s SAMS machine. It also fills cans in a wide range of sizes.
“The mACS provides the best automated features of our various machines, along with new package-size flexibility — all in one very compact, mobile and affordable machine,” ” said Cask founder Peter Love. “It’s an industry changer.”
The mACS can be converted to fill and seam cans of varying heights and diameters — from 5.5 ounces (163 mL) to 19.2 ounces (568 mL) in volume — in less than 30 minutes. The mACS also has electric cam-driven seamers, three CO2 pre-purge heads, three fill heads, and a post-fill rinser and dryer. It measures just 7 by 2.5 feet and has a very small footprint of 17.5 square feet.
“With this machine, our customers get highly efficient filling and the ability to create new revenue streams and beverages,” Love said. “They can quickly shift to new can sizes for current products, or jump from beer and cider to soft drinks and uncarbonated beverages such as cold brew coffee, wine and energy drinks. Since it can be equipped with an array of automated components, the mACS also enables our customers to scale up the automation of their canning process as they grow and diversify.”
Dead Armadillo Craft Brewing (Tulsa, Oklahoma) is now using the mACS to can its beer and expand its product line.
“When you add a liquid nitrogen doser to the mACS, you can use it to can coffee,” said Todd Phillips, Dead Armadillo’s Director of Operations. “So after many months of R&D, we’re entering the nitro cold-brewed coffee market with some friends at a local coffee roaster. It’s a brave new world for us that wouldn’t have been possible without Cask.”
“The mACS supports a larger array of can sizes than any line we have ever seen,” Phillips added. “And we can change from can sizes, lid formats, and product types with minimal effort.”
The mACS conveyor belt can feeder (as found on Cask’s larger ACS machine) allows for adding such automated pre- and post-packaging components as a depalletizer, inline date coder, nitrogen doser, pressure-sensitive labeler, shrink sleever and other components.
The machine’s CO2 pre-purge component evacuates oxygen prior to can filling, while the three-head filler’s unique technology combines fill-level sensors with proprietary foam-control valves.
Those features combine to produce filled cans with extremely low dissolved oxygen pickup of just 5-20 parts per billion — better or comparable to large-scale and much more expensive canning and bottling lines.
The mACS fills 20+ cans per minute and 50+ cases per hour with just one operator.
About Cask Global Canning Solutions
Cask has provided small-scale brewers with inventive, efficient and affordable brewing and packaging solutions since 1983. In 1999 Cask invented the micro-canning concept with a tabletop machine that seamed one can at a time.
In 2002 Cask made its first sale to a US micro-brewer, Oskar Blues Brewery & Pub in Lyons, Colorado. The first US craft brewer to brew and can its beer, the tiny brewpub became a fast-growing, cans-only success and one of America’s top craft brewers.
Today Cask’s affordable and small-footprint manual, semi-automated and automated canning systems are used by nearly 825 small breweries, wineries, cider makers and drinks manufacturers in 46 nations around the globe.
Cask’s micro-canning effort has dramatically changed the packaging of craft beverages around the world. Thanks to Cask and its rule-breaking customers, the once-maligned aluminum can has been transformed into the premium craft beverage package of choice for its freshness-keeping, fuel-saving, portability and environmental benefits.
For more details on Cask’s canning systems and trailblazing history visit www.cask.com.