Charrington's High Speed Bottling Line

From: THE BREWERS' GUARDIAN, JULY, 1954

CHARRINGTON'S HIGH SPEED BOTTLING LINES AT ANCHOR BREWERY

There are three bottling stores at the Anchor Brewery, the main one being known as the Nicholas Road Store, a fine block o£ buildings within the main brewery premises, erected and equipped in 1929. Plans were in being for the complete re-equipping of this store in 1940, but war intervened and prevented the carrying out of this project.

The post-war years brought their own difficulties. The company desired to erect an entirely new bottling store on the verge of the East End area where space for expansion if required would be available, but all attempts to obtain the necessary building licences were frustrated. Faced with a rapidly growing public taste for bottled beers which it was impossible to satisfy with existing means of production, the company formed a staff committee to devise ways and means of achieving the desired output in the available buildings, and at the same time to ensure that output was maintained while the work was in progress. Mr. A. P Wibroe was engaged as consultant to assist in arranging possible methods of “squeezing a quart out of a pint pot”.

This latter consideration was paramount and a direct consequence was that tie complete operation, carried out in stages, had to be spread over a lengthy period; in fact, the scheme has taken about two years to carry out.

Briefly stated, bottling capacity has been almost doubled by taking out the six old lines and installing in their places four new high-speed lines: two lines have an output each of 1,200 dozen half-pints per hour. and the other two have outputs of 1,000 dozen half-pints or 650 dozen pints per hour. Thus, in addition to increased speed considerable flexibility has been introduced in the type of output that can be obtained. Each line follows the normally accepted sequence of bottle washer, filler, crowner, pasteuriser and labeller, but there is provision on any or all of the lines for the pasteurisation process to be by-passed if desired The bottling hall is on the first floor of the building. The ground floor has loading banks on north and south sides, with full stores and the cellars also are utilised for full stores. On the second floor is the cold store, and a department for the handling of returned empties.