BURLINGTON, Vermont – Fiddlehead Brewing Company, located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, is renowned for its delicious beer selection and commitment to flavor, quality, the community, and the environment. Now Fiddlehead is doubling down on its environmental advocacy and reputation for a quality product by adding a drainage press directly into its canning line.
Humble beginnings
In 2011, Fiddlehead Brewing Co. opened a 3,000 square foot facility in scenic Shelburne, Vermont, just outside of the city of Burlington. In the decade since its establishment, the brewery has seen enormous success, expanding its physical footprint and production capacity to incorporate more production space and machinery. Now beer lovers benefit from its 35,000 square foot brewing space, where they fill 8,000 to 10,000 cases of delicious beer each week! The facility has a 60-barrel brewhouse is home to a 24-head rotary filler capable of filling 250 cans each minute. The brewery also has a tasting room at its original location for patrons to gather and sample the brew. Fiddlehead currently cans and distributes beer to most of the states in the northeastern United States, excluding only Maine. The Vermont brewery has high goals for 2022—they want to produce 90,000 barrels of their craft brew for distribution! The company has invested in machinery to streamline production and maximize its workforce’s productivity, making this goal well within its grasp.
Quality control is vital
Occasionally cans are underfilled or otherwise out-of-spec during the canning process. These cans are automatically removed from the production line to meet Fiddlehead’s quality control standards. Destroying the cans ensures that only the very best product leaves the facility for distribution to consumers. Historically the company had employees manually opening and pouring out beer cans for a couple of hours each shift. This work, while necessary, was both monotonous and impractical.
“Efficiency is important, but we also want our employees to enjoy the work they do,” said Jon Moorer, Production Manager of Fiddlehead Brewing Company. “Opening up and pouring cans down the drain was not enjoyable, and We knew there had to be a better option for this process.”
Partners in sustainability
That’s when Fiddlehead reached out to WEIMA. The WEIMA E.200 drainage press installation gives the brewery more flexibility while clearing its employees to do more meaningful and essential tasks. WEIMA supplied the E.200 drainage press in late 2021 and quickly integrated it into Fiddlehead’s pre-existing canning line. The out-of-spec rejects are now automatically ejected from the conveyor, allowing the rejected cans to fall directly into the hopper of the E.200. The filled cans are then hydraulically compressed into round discs, allowing the liquid contents to drain from the cans at the time of compaction. The ejected discs of compressed aluminum cans save space on the production floor. It also makes recycling valuable metal manageable and profitable.
For More Information:
https://weima.com/us/success-stories/fiddlehead-brewing-canning-line/