Consumers are increasingly buying milk in plastic bottles rather than the traditional glass, but Longslow Dairies Group believes that glass is better in the current age of environmental friendliness and recycling. Supplying product in glass bottles gives consumers a cost-effective solution to refillable milk packaging that is also kind to the environment. To meet this demand Longslow has installed the UK’s first totally automated milk bottling plant at their Central Dairies facility at Colwyn Bay. The project was handed to Dawson, a specialist filling, cleaning and handling systems manufacturer based at Heckmondwike, with the brief that the plant be easy to use and maintain.
At the hub of the plant system is a Mitsubishi Master PLC that coordinates all communications via a CC-Link fieldbus. The 7 basic sections of the plant are each controlled by an Mitsubishi Micro PLC. These control all local operations and connect back to the Master PLC using CC-Link. Utilising intelligent slave PLCs rather than one large PLC to control the whole plant allows sections to continue operating even if there are problems in other plant areas, ensuring high throughput and increased section efficiency.
CC-Link’s 10 Mega baud speed of data transfer and flexible deterministic data packaging are crucial to the success of the entire system. Using CC-Link for the distributed control permits simultaneous controlled shut downs of even the remote sections, and makes warm starting the production process much easier.
Andy Bethel, Area Engineering Manager for Longslow Dairies Group, has no problem in justifying the investment in the new system: “Before the automated system was installed we were running at about 60% efficiency; now with the new system we are averaging 87%. Throughput has also increased by 30% due to the improved control of the plant. The increased data we now receive back from the plant is much more accurate, allowing us to identify throughput restriction areas and correct them to make the system even more efficient in its operation”.
Download the brochure "Applications from around the globe" here.