Page 26 - Packaging News Sep-Oct 2020

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FOOD & BEVERAGE PACKAGING | www.packagingnews.com.au | September-October 2020
Can it – a move to cans for craft beer
Australian craft beer consumers are voicing a preference for cans over bottles, and breweries are investing in canning lines to keep up with demand. PKN editor Ian Ackerman reports.
ACOLD foamer in a tinnie: that’s what Australians want these days, and brewers big and small are moving to supply the market with beer packaged in cans.
Beer Cartel’s annual Austra- lian Craft Beer Survey found that, in 2019, consumer prefer-
ence for cans overtook bottles for the first time in the survey’s four- year history. The survey found respondents registering a prefer- ence for cans had grown 8 per cent to 38 per cent, while 27 per cent pre- ferred bottles. According to the sur- vey, “This reflects the changing landscape of vessels in Australia where the majority of craft brewers now sell beer in cans”.
Brisbane-based packaging com- pany Fibre King is one of the first companies in Australia to tailor packaging machinery design to accommodate the needs of indepen- dent, craft-sized breweries.
Fibre King CEO James Windsor said the company had identified craft breweries as a growing industry.
“[We] knew that we could develop equipment specific to their needs that would eliminate the need for manual packaging processes,” Windsor said.
“Having had the opportunity to work with breweries such as Stone & Wood and Balter Brewing, we were able to understand the chal- lenges within their production line and alter our machines to suit.”
When Byron Bay-based Stone & Wood Brewing Co decided to intro- duce a canned beer option, the new equipment needed to be compact to fit in its existing facility. It also needed to be flexible, as can vol- umes would start slow and build over time.
Fibre King installed a common depalletising system and split the bottling and canning streams to the individual filling machines. Once the cans are filled, they run through the bottle filler in a bypass mode and into a common cluster-packer, case packer and palletiser system.
Nick Cornish from Stone & Wood said: “The solution was a cost- effective way to be able to run the cans without investing huge amounts of capital while we grow the product.”
Eventually, as the demand for cans increases, Stone & Wood will need to incorporate a dedicated line, at which time the can-specific equipment can be relocated.
ABOVE: The “Little Packer” at Black Hops Brewery
BELOW: Craft beer is increasingly packaged in cans.
Separately, Fibre King worked closely with Gold Coast-based Black Hops Brewery to develop a can-spe- cific case packer. Windsor said the collaborative project has provided the market with an off-the-shelf machine that solves a common problem in small-to-medium-sized craft breweries: how to transition away from manual to automated packaging processes.
The new brewery-specific case packer, named “Little Packer”, is able to pack four- and six-pack clus- ters with the option to pack loose cans if required. It can run both 24- and 16-can cartons and glue the boxes with no full-time operator.
Black Hops owner Michael McGovern said the new machine would help the brewery jump into its next growth stage. What started as a contract outfit in 2014, Black Hops is now producing 500,000 litres per year at its own production facility on the Gold Coast.
“It’s been almost like a new evolu- tion in Australian craft beer,” McGovern said. ■
The solution was a cost-effective way to be able to run the cans without investing huge amounts of capital while we grow the product.”
– Nick Cornish from Stone & Wood