Walsall Engineering group keep the lines moving for Diageo

Walsall Engineering has played a significant part in line relocations from Diageo’s plant at Kilmarnock to Leven. Several packaging lines have been re-installed into the new Bottling Hall 3 at Leven, part of the multi-million pound investment by Diageo in the Leven development. This involved the transfer of over 1000 SKU’s and 46 brands.

Controlrite, a subsidiary of Walsall Engineering, was awarded the main contract by Diageo as they had successfully worked with them at other sites and had complete confidence in their ability to manage the project and re-engineer the line control system. Controlrite undertook all of the electrical works through Frederick Smith Electrical, their electrical installation division.

Over the past year, the fully integrated project and design team has taken on the task of relocating and re-engineering no less than four premium and two luxury whiskey bottling lines for the drinks giant Diageo. Through an understanding of the customers’ requirements and knowledge of the intricacies of handling these valuable bottled products, million pound contracts were secured for the relocation works.

The initial phases of the contracts were to relocate and re-engineer the production layouts to suit the very modern and efficient new large bottling hall, which is 2.5 times the size of the Murrayfield rugby pitch!

Walsall Engineering took responsibility for the mechanical side of the contract and project managed the whole transfer process for the group. New bottle conveyors were needed to integrate sections of the new line configurations and were designed and manufactured by the fabrication division of Walsall Engineering. As part of the overall contract, the company also co-ordinated and managed service engineers from all of the main machinery suppliers whose equipment was being relocated.

Each of the four premium production lines were dismantled and re-installed in 4 weeks as per the project plan, with production starting again during week 5. This limited disruption to Diageo as a business and resulted in target efficiencies being met during the initial commissioning phase, with hand over and acceptance being achieved soon after. This approach proved to be very successful in terms of meeting key milestones and reaching strategic production targets.

The second phase of works included the relocation and re-engineering of two luxury product production lines that brought exciting new challenges in product handling, where an individual premium bottle of whisky can cost thousands of pounds. Combining the experience and innovation of Walsall Engineering and the Controlrite design team, they provided the winning solution that achieved all the criteria of contactless handling, whilst achieving high efficiencies. A complete new solution was designed for a puck handling system, with specially engineered conveyors from Walsall Engineering, a control system from Controlrite and bottle specific pucks from Zepf.

The overall project was a major success for Walsall Engineering and a key milestone in the development of the company, as this goes to demonstrate the Groups capability and positions it as a major player in the business of relocations and re-engineering of packaging lines.