20 BREWING & BEVERAGE INDUSTRIES BUSINESS New BrewPilot™now available from Vigo Ltd Vigo Ltd can now offer American Beer Equipment’s new BrewPilot™ system to the UK market. The BrewPilot is ideal for start-up craft breweries, micro/nano-breweries, or brew-pubs, particularly where space and/or budget is limited. It is also a good option for established breweries looking for a test-pilot system which will offer a high degree of control over the brewing process. The BrewPilot™ is available from 2 to 3.5 BBL-UK (3 to 5 BBL-US) capacities. The materials, construction and processes used are the same as American Beer Equipment’s larger brewhouse systems. This enables breweries with limited resources to benefit from ABE’s key design features. It also means that UK breweries which already have a brewhouse, now have the opportunity to own a pilot-scale version to produce pilot brews which could be easily ‘upscaled’ on their original brewhouse. If you are interested in the Brew-Pilot™, visit the Vigo Ltd stands at BevExpo2018 and/or BEERX2018. www.vigoltd.com For more information visit: A Linx 8900 Continuous Ink Jet (CIJ) printer is being used for coding onto beer cans at a successful craft brewery in London. Since purchasing the Linx 8900 for its range of premium beers, Beavertown Brewery has praised the machine’s ease of use, compatibility with high-speed canning lines, and reliable operation in a damp environment. The Linx 8900 is printing a single line code, using Linx Black fast-drying 1240 ink, onto the bottom rim of the can, ensuring accurate placement and excellent legibility in this small area. The 2-3mm high code comprises ‘best before’ date and batch code for traceability purposes. The company had originally used a Linx CJ400 CIJ printer for all its coding requirements, but upgraded to the Linx 8900 after undergoing a dramatic expansion that saw its production batches increase from 700 litres to 10,000 litres, the equivalent of 77,000 litres of beer per week, leading to much higher speeds on its canning line. The Linx 8900 is able to handle the line’s current maximum speed of 200 cans per minute as well as higher speeds should throughput have to increase further as demand for Beavertown Brewery’s products continues to grow. Equally important, the printer can also cope with the line’s variable speed, ensuring code quality and clarity remains consistent even as the line speeds up or slows down. With the installation of the Linx 8900, Beaverton Brewery has been able to redeploy its original Linx CJ400 printer, using its carton coding feature to print lot numbers and best before dates onto boxes of cans, as well as product names onto boxes of smaller runs of beer. “The Linx 8900 has provided the ideal solution to help us cope with growing demand for our cans of beer,” comments Tom Jones, Beavertown Brewery’s Assistant Head Brewer and Production Manager. “It can easily keep up with our canning line speed and I really like the IP55 rating, which is an important benefit as we wash the line down after every shift. Equally important the touchscreen interface is simply laid out and allows us to change over codes very quickly after each run. “In summary, the Linx 8900 is really easy to use, keeps up with the line and meets all our needs.” Linx 8900 ideal for beer cans www.linxglobal.com For more information visit: PRODUCTION EQUIPMENT Showcase 20_Layout 1 13/11/2017 13:17 Page 1