CUPBLOCK sets new standards

Altstätten, January 2018

The Swiss company SwissPrimePack AG is a specialist for tailor-made packaging and product solutions. These include packaging for the food industry with a focus on the dairy industry or ice cream specialities on the one hand and products in the food service segment such as drinking cups, cutlery, accessories for the vending and coffee-to-go sectors and for fast food restaurants on the other. Special attention is paid to the elaboration of customer-specific as well as ecologically and economically balanced overall concepts. SwissPrimePack employs around 150 people at its Swiss locations in Altstätten and Niederuzwil and supplies customers throughout Europe. For the various product groups, SwissPrimePack covers the entire development process: from packaging design and production to decorative finishing for a glamorous appearance of the products on the sales shelf.

At the Altstätten production site there is a very special labelling line: the CUPBLOCK - a joint development of the Bavarian labelling machine manufacturer GERNEP GmbH and Schleuter Maschinen- und Apparatebau GmbH from Oyten, near Bremen.
"The customer's enquiry reached both companies and, based on many years of trustful cooperation, the most modern, effective and economical solution was jointly developed and delivered to the customer", says Heinz-Jörg Fischer, Director Marketing & Sales Schleuter.

The heart of the CUPBLOCK is a GERNEP SOLUTA 20-1880 6SK SD. It is integrated in Schleuter's MULTISTACK PRO consisting of elevator, linear conveyor belt with cup guide, magazine and bar lifter, stacking station as well as a counting and stacking unit. Plastic cups in various shapes and sizes are labelled - mainly for ice cream in sizes 150 ml, 250 ml, 500 ml, 750 ml, 900 ml and 1000 ml - each with bottom and two side labels.

The empty, unlabeled cups are manually loaded from the cartons delivered by the adjacent production plant into the so-called elevator, which automatically transports them upwards onto the conveyor belt, where they run to the bar lifter. After being taken over by the bar lifter, the cups are guided from the upper conveyor belt to the destacking tower, where the packs are braked by lateral guides and guided individually onto the lower conveyor belt by means of four vertical screws. The adjacent conveyor belt is equipped with carriers and has the same pitch as the SOLUTA. This can be individually adapted to the different cup sizes and shapes by means of an adjustable cup guide. "This is one of the great advantages of the CUPBLOCK," reports Jana Walker, CEO of SwissPrimePack. "We only need this one machine to label all our cup sizes." The change of format parts for the different cup and label formats can be carried out by two persons within 45 to 60 minutes. At SwissPrimePack, the boxes for storing the format parts are located in the immediate vicinity of the CUPBLOCK - a quick changeover is therefore no problem.

After destacking, the cups are first transported to the bottom labeling station. Here, two self-adhesive dispensers are used, which function alternately. This so-called non-stop function increases the throughput quantity: max. 70 m carrier paper per minute runs alternately from the two dispensers. The first of five camera units is used before the containers run into the infeed starwheel for side labelling: it checks the presence of the bottom label on the one hand and its correct placement on the other. The parameters for this are set via the main touch panel of the complete line. There are two smaller touch panels each on the elevator and on the stacking tower.

After checking the cups, they are transported to the carousel via the infeed screw. A conventional horizontally positioned infeed auger was deliberately omitted as there is a risk of damage due to the fragility of the buckets. At the customer's request, a special feature has to be taken into account for the side labelling of the containers: the overlapping of the labels should take place on the cup sides once on the right "under" the second label and once on the left "over" the first label. This is achieved by extremely precise, servo-controlled container turntables and a special stripping technology. Four dispenser units are docked to the SOLUTA, two for each label in non-stop operation. The dispensers are mounted on carriages which can be pushed in and out during operation to change the label rolls in a user-friendly way. The door flaps open and close hydraulically upwards and downwards as soon as the impulse to unlock the carriage is given. This not only ensures occupational safety, but also increases efficiency, as the remaining donors can continue to run. Up to 300 "small" (150 and 250 ml) and up to 200 "large" (500, 750, 900 and 1000 ml) cups per minute can be fully labelled and removed from the belt in a controlled manner.

The labelled containers continue to run over the discharge starwheel, where all four sides are monitored by cameras. If a label is not positioned correctly according to the preset parameters or is otherwise faulty, it is immediately ejected by compressed air pusher into the separate "collection station". The perfectly and precisely labelled containers are then pushed over the carriers on the conveyor belt to the stacking unit. The cups are then stacked into each other by the stacking wheel. This endless cup stack is guided to the counting unit by a transport belt. The stack is counted via two horizontally positioned counting screws. After counting an individually adjustable quantity of cups, the cup rod is transferred to the packing table by means of a pneumatic linear drive.
The cups are manually packed into the cartons from which they were removed before being labelled. The human eye checks them again for decorative refinement by means of precise labelling before they finally embark on their journey to filling.

Plastic cup labelling from the roll
The CUPBLOCK - the innovative, fully automated cup labelling system: ensures wrap-around labelling of simple and multi-part shaped cups with one or more self-adhesive labels. Transparent or metallic glossy labels can also be processed.
The CUPBLOCK operates reliably and precisely, is flexible due to additional equipment and can be supplied as a modular integration or complete line.

Infobox GERNEP
For more than 30 years, GERNEP GmbH has been developing and manufacturing labelling machines that are tailor-made for a wide range of industry solutions with market-driven product features - all around the globe.
The rotary labelling machines of GERNEP GmbH are real specialists in meeting the constantly increasing customer requirements of the most diverse markets:
GERNEP SOLUTA for flexible self-adhesive, GERNEP LABETTA for universal wet glue and GERNEP ROLLFED or ROLLINA for efficient wrap-around labelling with hotmelt.

Alternatively, GERNEP labelling machines can be modularly designed so that almost any special solution can be realised in addition to the standardised models. The aggregates can be easily and quickly upgraded or dismounted. GERNEP also offers a wide range of additional equipment (e.g. camera-based or photoelectronic equipment).

The GERNEP machine family thus offers the complete freedom of combination of wet, self-adhesive and both hotmelt systems in order to perfectly meet individual requirements and implement modern container equipment.

GERNEP offers with its rotary labelling machines
- Project planning, development and production from a single source,
- flexible equipment options,
- innovative modifications,
- precise technology,
- high quality materials and workmanship "Made in Germany
as well as
- the entire service from instruction to maintenance to after-sales service
and is therefore a future-proof investment - worldwide!

Infobox Schleuter
The newly developed MULTISTACK PRO destacking and restacking system has the unique ability to provide and restack cups and trays in a wide variety of formats and designs on the processing machine.

For almost 100 years, SCHLEUTER (founded in 1919) has specialised in the development and manufacture of machines with a focus on labelling machines for self-adhesive labels and their transport systems. Today SCHLEUTER is one of the leading manufacturers of labelling machines with high performance and economy.
The complex labelling and packaging machines, including complete system integration and automation in all areas of information and decoration labelling, today perform key tasks in the customer's production lines.
SCHLEUTER's special fields are dairies, cosmetics, shipping and logistics, pharmaceuticals and battery labelling.

SCHLEUTER offers with its machines and apparatus:
- long-proven labelling systems with long service life and great flexibility
- high accuracy in combination with optimal economic efficiency
- Decades of expertise of long-standing employees
- customized equipment options
- Adjustments to developments and new inquiries from the market
- Retrofit including modernization of electronics and drive technology of older machines to current delivery status
- worldwide service and dispatch of spare and wear parts

Contact details:

SwissPrimePack AG
CH-9450 Altstätten

Mr Fabrizio Finazzi
CSMO & Purchase
Direct phone: +41 71 757 71 28
fabrizio.finazzi@swissprimepack.com