Welcome to our wild, powered and canned by sunshine! Belvoir Canning Line

The name Belvoir Farm Drinks has long been synonymous with delicious fruit drinks made with natural ingredients from the vale of Belvoir. Their premium range of soft drinks has now flourished, including cordials – to dilute – and lightly sparkling, which are ready to drink. Each crafted by taking simple ingredients – natural fruits, hand-picked flowers, fresh juices and spices – with all the subtle and sublime flavours of nature.

An example of this is, every year local villagers from the area surrounding the factory take to the fields and hedgerows and collect fresh elderflowers as the ingredient of one of their leading products Elderflower cordial and Presse – ideal for the long hot Summers…….

A Green Plant Naturally

Fitting in with nature and reducing their carbon footprint led the company to install 340 kWh solar photovoltaic array roof on the sunniest side of their factory in The Vale of Belvoir. It totalled 1672m² of roof coverage and offsets up to 67,989 kgs of CO2 per year! This has been increased by  an additional 203 modules, covering a further 385m2

This means they are seeing around 40% of their energy consumption from solar power, which will increase to over 80% in the summer months & on sunny days

The new solar array is also powering their latest investment in sustainable packaging, which has been the installation of a new canning line from Enterprise Tondelli who have been working at Belvoir for more than 20 years.

Project Foresight

As a long-term supplier and trusted partner, Enterprise pre-planned for the new can line some years ago when the green field site state of the art factory was designed. This made the can line installation very easy.  One key feature of the line is the very high hygiene standards that complement the product.  Belvoir only use natural ingredients,  so cleaning and machine design was critical.

Canning Equipment Supply

The line starts with a hygienic high level empty can depalletiser constructed entirely in stainless steel, which is quite unusual.  However, for lines this speed, the constructional style has become Enterprise Tondelli’s standard especially in the brewing industry where the beer is filled un pasteurised and unfiltered. This standard ensures the machine can be effectively cleaned and also guarantees a long life in what can sometimes be quite a cold environment if located in a remote unheated warehouse, for instance. The machine from Eurosistemi can handle both card and returnable corrugated plastic layer boards.

Can cleaning is by a Eurosistemi triple channel gravity can air rinser. The unit has clear polycarbonate covers so any build-up of dust inside the machine is visible. Ionised air is used with both a minimum pressure sensor that guarantees the efficacy of cleaning and also a flow sensor that can detect any blocked nozzles. Dedicated can channels for different can sizes (slim, sleek and std.) ensure a quick and easy change over with automatic gates at high level feeding to the different lanes. The unit was manufactured by Eurosistemi who make all Enterprise Tondelli conveyor systems, control panels and field wiring.

The can filler seamer manufactured by Matrix also has some constructional features that assist with the hygiene and product integrity. One such feature is that the machine has fully automatic CIP cups, which means they are always correctly fitted and also do not become a hygiene issue in themselves when manually fitted. The base frame of the machine is minimised and fully inclined so that it is self-draining and easy to clean. The filler carousel has an open construction so that everything can be easily cleaned without the need to remove covers where dirt can build up behind. 

The individual flow meters are exposed along with the product piping, so there is just a support base and no vertical covering. The seamer is also a very open constructional style without lots of covers, that makes cleaning more difficult. As usual, the filler has a central filler bowl that has a CIP spray ball inside for cleaning, along with flow meters and electro pneumatic valve controls. This allows many product specific recipes to be entered, controlling the CO2 flushing times, filling volume, snifting phase, etc – all from the operator panel and whilst the machine is running, so the real impact can be evaluated. A high capacity, low level lid feeder makes the task of supplying lids to the filler a very easy, safe and convenient one and can handle both 202 and 200 lids.

CIP is from an Enterprise Tondelli supplied, centralised, three-stream CIP set that also serves the existing premix carbonator unit already on site. These units were also manufactured by Enterprise partner Matrix Srl.

The cans are level inspected by equipment from Enterprise before entering the tunnel pasteuriser. After the discharge, the cans are level inspected again by equipment from Enterprise and then sent to the Baumer packer for packing into cartons or shrink-wrapped in a tray and film. After installing the  X-ray level inspection equipment, Enterprise has RPS (Radiation Protection Supervisor)  training as required by recent legislation, so the units were certified before handover.

The complete conveyor system was manufactured by Eurosistemi and does not require any lubrication. The ergonomic design rationalises the labour content on the line. For example the filler area has one operator for minding the filler/seamer, lid feeder, depalletiser and level inspection as they are all very closely positioned in a one work area. Part of the project was can drying post pasteuriser, so a TF2 container dryer was used. This has multi directional nozzles fed by an overhead mounted fan in an acoustic enclosure which makes for a very compact and quiet solution to container drying.

Another useful addition to the line is a multipacker that can also be used by the bottling line adjacent to produce multipacks or fully enclosed kraft board packs. These are then fed into the combined Baumer packer for final tray packing and shrink-wrapping. This machine can also pack the cans in wrapround, large format cartons too, for maximum flexibility. The integration of conveyors from Enterprise allows a variety of formats to be handled between the two machines. The conveyors allow pack turning and laning, using a platten type laner, that has continuous motion for smoother operation and less potentially damaging to packs such as those involved in moving guide type systems. There is a common work area for the multipacker and Baumer packer with open materials access thus reducing staffing levels.

Customer Satisfaction

Frank Fitzgibbons – Production Director commented that “Belvoir has worked with Enterprise Tondelli from our very early days as a business and the latest project has proven very successful. With Enterprise, its always been about thinking ahead and future planning for our long term plans rather than short-termism. This latest project was planned some time ago and then carried out on a very short lead time with a reduced installation window. Working together with our own team, it was on time and within budget. Great work – thank you again” .

Enterprise Tondelli are proud to be a partner with Belvoir and work together in the long term. Craig Wilson – Managing Director at Enterprise Tondelli UK said that “over the last 22 years we have enjoyed working with Belvoir and assisting them to fulfil their goals in a timely and cost effective way. The complete project team headed by Martin Reynolds has been very helpful in making the project a success. Much appreciated”.

Belvoir Farm Drinks are available at all major supermarkets and independent grocers. To learn more about their full range of delicious drinks including the new Botanical Soda’s, non-alcoholic passion fruit martini, peach Bellini, line and yuzu mojito and J&T go to  https://www.belvoirfarm.co.uk/

Enterprise Tondelli has been working in the industry since 1977 and supplying equipment in over 40 countries. The Belvoir Farms Drinks canning project  project is just one of the latest projects by Enterprise that has ranged in scope from nitro beer canning, high speed wine bottling and turn key beer bottling. Suppling canning lines 1,500 to 72,000 cans per hour , bottling from 600 to 60,000 bph and kegging lines too. This wealth of experience ensures Enterprise add something to all their projects.”