Open modern bottling premises

Open modern bottling premises

2 Oct 1962

MESSRS. Earl Bottlers Ltd. have opened in Earl Street, South, Dublin, what is claimed to be the most modem and scientific bottling premises in Ireland. At a time when the Irish economy is steadily improving and the consequent demand for wines and spirits is increasing, this, new business fills a need for a modern bottling operation to keep pace with that demand and, la particular, to facilitate wholesalers and retailers of wines and spirits who need a first class bottling service. Earl Bottlers Ltd. operate in a bonded premises under the supervision of the Customs and Excise Authorities. This means a greater economy because excise duties make up approximately seven-eighths of the cost of spirits and when held and bottled in bond there is a minimum capital and interest outlay on them.’

ESSENTIAL SERVICE
BOTTLING can be described as a necessary expense but is. in fact, an essential exercise in packaging products which are both difficult to handle and keep. Spirits and wines quickly lose their condition and value if not handled and packaged properly.
Today, properly means scientifically and Earl Bottlers Ltd. have taken a completely modern and scientific approach to the problem. Briefly, their customers are now being offered the highest quality bottling.
To attain this quality and to maintain the standards once set necessitated the installation of the most modern bottling – machinery available today. This has been done. Its operation Is being supported by the best technical brains In the world on filtration, bottling, labelling and packaging.
The filtration materials used by Earl Bottlers Ltd. comes from the most experienced filtration manufacturers in the world. And it is surely more than coincidence that these suppliers are also the biggest in the field of filtration.

SOPHISTICATED
LABELLING plays a very important part in this.
A general view of the bottling plant, showing sterilizer in background, then inspection of bottles, filling and corking wine and spirit world, and labelling in quantity can be a problem because of the many different drinks, the dozens of bottle shapes, and the multitude of label shapes and sizes. The labelling machinery installed by Earl Bottlers Ltd. is so “sophisticated” that it is capable of dealing with anything up to 400 different types and shapes of bottles and labels!
The layout of the new bottling store has been planned to the smallest detail. All pipes, carrying the various products, are colour coded to avoid any possible error in bottling. p1Ve Vate, three of 1,000 gallons capacity, and two of 500 gallons capacity are made of fibreglass. Experience has shown that this very modern idea for vat construction results in a completely inert container which cannot rust, or deteriorate m any way and which remains completely impervious to the various liquids which it must contain from time to time. Production capacity of the plant is 200 dozen bottles per hour. This means that in one hour something like 400 gallons of any liquor can be fltered, bottled, labelled and cartoned. The pattern of the whole operation for any type of liquor is basically the same

HOW IT’S DONE
FIRST the liquor is pumped from its cask through a high pressure filtering machine to the already prepared vat or vats. Customers bottles which are normally delivered to Earl Bottlers Ltd. in one dozen size cartons are placed on a mechanical conveyor.
The bottles are disgorged into the sterilising unit, where they are all thoroughly washed and sterilised. This procedure is carried out for all bottles, new and old. Sterilised bottles are inspected at the rate ot two hundred dozen per hour. No bottle is allowed pass unless it is perfect in every respect. The bottles are then filled with the filtered liquor, corked and sealed.
The seals are spun on for neatness. Bottles then pass through an infra-red drying oven to remove moisture from the visk-rings.
The bottles arc labelled. Next they are packed into the cartons from which they were removed at the beginning of the process. The whole operation is fully automatic so that the liquid product is not touched by hand, at any point.

AN ADVANTAGE
THE building in which this most up-to-date bottling plant is situated is about 250 years old. While this may seem somewhat paradoxical, it is in fact a distinct advantage. Beneath the solid steel-tongued, four-inch, oak floor boards of this new spotless, and colourful plant is a labrynth of bond stores. In these tens of thousands of gallons of whiskey is maturing under perfect conditions. There is an atmosphere of peace and quietness, the air is still, the floors have long since been lost under an inches thick carpet of the dust that time alone can form. This dust is one of the stores greatest assets. It acts as the perfect temperature controller for the maturing process going on in the whiskey casks. Beneath this still and peaceful store flows the Poddle, a river seldom seen, or if seen, rarely recognised by Dubliners. So Earl Bottlers, the most modern and high speed scientific bottling operation in Ireland is married to perhaps the oldest and slowest art in the world, that of producing perfect drinks. Dawsons, suppliers of the washing and sterilising equipment, modified to suit the needs of Earl Brothers Ltd.. as well as being the suppliers of the conveyor system and the carton sealing machines are one of the oldest and best known bottling plant suppliers in the world.

Erben—specialists in closures are one of the original thinkers in the field of the spinning process that- in which the capsule is moulded on to the bottle top making it absolutely air-tight and at the same time pilfer proof.

Erben also supplied the big fibre glass vats which are inert and not subject to rusting or to causing any detrimental effects to the various liquors.

The following are Directors of ‘Earl Bottlers Limited: Messrs. Anthony Dillon, W. Campbell, N. Beamish, T. MacAnaney and E. M. Semple.

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