CONTROL & AUTOMATION
AUTOMATION SOLUTION
ADNAMS
HOW TO ORGANISE A PICK-UP IN A BREWERY
While brewing in Britain pre-dates the
Roman invasion in 54AD, its evolution has
helped to propel the food and beverage
industry to become the country’s largest
manufacturing sector. As techniques have
been honed over the subsequent centuries,
numerous breweries have established
themselves as household names. Adnams
still operates out of its original 18th century
site in Southwold, but its commitment to
tradition has not stopped it implementing
a 21st century end-of-line automation
solution.
“Adnams Brewery has been in Southwold
since 1872,” begins Fergus Fitzgerald, Head
Brewer at Adnams. “We brew mostly cask
beer but we have invested in expanding
our range over the last few years to include
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a variety of keg beers, as well as a distillery.
It’s quite a changing brewery really.
“We can brew up to 40 different beers over
the course of a year – we have our core
beers that we do day-in, day-out, but we
also have our seasonal beers and one-offs
too. We brew about 100,000 barrels a year –
although by barrel I mean a brewer’s barrel
– which is 163 litres.”
The brewery still operates out of its
original site at the heart of Southwold, and
produces the equivalent of 1,900 barrels of
beer a day. However, fitting a 21st century
brewery into a 19th century building has
proved to be an on-going challenge for
Fergus and his team, as they have looked to
keep pace with modern brewing methods
and rapidly expanding consumer demands
for a much wider portfolio of beers and
spirits.
One area where the brewery has looked
to take serious strides forward is the
introduction of automation; and more
specifically, the use of robotic end-of-line
palletising systems to process the beer
barrels once they have been filled.
Fergus continues: “While we’ve expanded
our portfolio in recent years, cask beer very
much remains a core part of the brewery.
At the end of our main cask filling line –
where we put the beer into the barrels – we
had an old palletiser which took up a lot of
space.