As Delegat’s continues to lead the growth of the New Zealand category and establish internationally one of the world’s great super-premium wine brands in Oyster Bay, the company needed to upgrade its Auckland bottling and packaging facility.
Delegat’s Wine Estate is a leading New Zealand winemaker enjoying global success with its Oyster Bay brand.
“We required the upgrade of our existing facility in West Auckland to increase our production output while maintaining quality,” says Delegat’s capital projects manager Richard Bullock.
“The consistent high quality of our wines and the packaging is central to achieving our objectives.”
In early 2011, Delegat’s installed a new bottling and packaging line into the existing facility which is meeting the target output of 7,000 bottles per hour. Delegat’s has also installed a series of fully automated camera stations which check the bottles going into the line, labels on the bottles and the packed cases leaving to ensure very high quality product standards are being achieved.
The last element of the new line to be tackled was automatic palletising and shrink wrapping the cases of 12 and six packs of wine for faster line speed.
Delegat’s prepared a tender brief and requested proposals for fully automatic palletising and stretch-wrapping equipment.
JMP Engineering Auckland responded immediately to the enquiry from Delegat’s, proposing a solution to all the specific requirements, and was awarded the contract.
“We have very high standards and we reference checked JMP during the evaluation process and were impressed with JMP’s credentials and their equipment that we viewed at other installations,” says Mr Bullock.
Working closely with the team at Delegat’s to tailor a solution, JMP packaging and palletising specialist Steve Selman prepared the design and submitted a complete equipment package, which had to be installed in a short timeframe.
One of the unusual demands of the palletiser was the ability to pack the cases of wine on their sides, as well as the normal upright situation.
This unique feature is extremely important in the containerisation of export products in order to maximise the available space, and hence be as cost-effective in shipping as possible.
The order was given to JMP in late October 2011 with instructions for the installation to be completed by the end of the Christmas/New Year break.
“The installation of the new palletiser had to be over the holiday period to tie in with a planned shutdown of the line for annual maintenance and it was imperative the line was performing to specification on time, to ensure we kept to our production schedule,” says Mr Bullock.
The JMP equipment was installed and commissioned within the demanding schedule and Mr Bullock is happy to confirm that Delegat’s is delighted with the outcome.
“The entire line is now operational and meeting our high expectations and the fully integrated robotic palletising and stretch wrapping system has enabled us to achieve our target outputs while maintaining quality,” Mr Bullock says.
“JMP were very professional and easy to deal with during the whole process and were happy to go the extra distance to ensure that the demanding project schedule was met. JMP came up with improvements during the design and manufacturing process and were always motivated to meet our objective of achieving the world class outcome that Delegat’s were looking for.”
JMP Engineering has installations currently under way in Australia, the UK and South America – and continues to grow in the USA.
