Krones: Growing with Niagara Bottling

By Kai Frick, Krones AG, Neutraubling

The soaring rise of Niagara Bottling in the US continues. This year, the dealers brand bottler of still water saw its eighth filling plant go into operation.

For the first time, Niagara opted for a line layout in what's called the "fighterline" configuration or the "W-design", aiming confidently at very good accessibility for the operators and a concomitantly high overall equipment efficiency.

Because sales of still water are stagnating in the USA, and in 2008/2009 actually declined. A series of small national brands have already withdrawn from the market. Over these last two years, particularly, due to the international economic crisis, a fierce battle has been raging over prices. Dealers' brands, by contrast, have tended to profit from the business environment. These private labels meanwhile account for about a third of the total market, and their share is rising.

Niagara's sales are achieving high double-figure growth rates every year: in 2009. The firm's output increased by 33%, while for 2010 the founder's son and proprietor Andy Peykoff II is expecting further growth of 20% from what is then a higher level.

Meanwhile the family firm is generating approximately six billion fills a year from an installed capacity of almost 10billion fills. Niagara's market share on the American water market, including all dealers' brands bottled, is estimated at about 5%.

Good quality, low price, concentration on dealers' brands, outstanding service support, and optimum customer-responsiveness: these are the factors driving success. With its own brand Niagara, which accounts for only a small proportion of the total output, the company is likewise operating in the low-price segment. "Our brand achieves a quite respectable volume, but on the other hand it's not big enough to make large-scale marketing campaigns worthwhile," comments Andy Peykoff II.

Ultra-efficient lines The company has purchased an existing hall in Plainfield, Indianapolis, and began early in 2010 to install another three Krones lines. Two of the three lines are identical in terms of machinery, mirror-imaged, and installed opposite each other so that the large open operator area forms the center of the two lines, enabling all machines to be reached from here with minimized legwork. For this facility, Niagara opted for what is called a W-layout for the line, where the blow-molder/filler monobloc, the labeler, the packer and the palletizer are each positioned at the tip of the associated conveyor links, forming a sort of expanded W. Rali Sanderson: "What we particularly liked about the fighterline concept, or, as we call it, the W-layout, was the efficiency of operator deployment. In this configuration, all the machines, starting with the monobloc, then the labeler and the tray packer, all the way through to the palletizer, are so close together that the operator can keep an eye on all of them. We designed redundancy in the lines, plus a sizable buffer section downstream of the filler, so as to avoid an unnecessary stoppage of the monobloc if at all possible." In Lines I and II, Niagara uses blow-molder/filler monoblocs. The integrated Contiform S24 blow-molding machines each produce 1,900 containers per cavity and hour, which corresponds to an output of 760 bottles a minute. "We've been looking at the monobloc configuration for some years now, and are satisfied that this technology is meanwhile mature““, comments Andy Peykoff II. "That's why we've now decided to integrate the monoblocs into our line philosophy." Rali Sanderson concurs: "What we particularly liked about the monobloc was the space-saving configuration and the elimination of air conveyors and we have great confidence in this monobloc's efficiency. In one of the lines, we have an option for changing over to different bottle sizes, and we think that the monobloc version is much better suited for fast change-overs, because here we aren't being confronted with any problems in the air conveyor. So basically we only have to change formats on a single machine. At present we're looking at about three change-overs a month." Downstream of the blow-molder/filler monobloc is the second tip in the W-shaped line layout, the labeling zone. The third tip is the Variopac Pro TFS shrink-wrapper, which mainly creates 24-bottle shrink-packs. A little apart from the large operator zone of the two lines, the fourth tip protrudes in the shape of the palletizer. Krones integrated the Contifeed preform feeder, the Capcade closure sorter, and the Linadry drying tunnel for blow-drying the filled containers prior to labeling. In the third line installed, Niagara was keen to have an even higher output. Here, a Contiform S36K small-cavity blow-molder/fill monobloc produces up to 68,400 containers an hour. The machinery involved and the line layout are identical to the two "smaller" lines. In future, the plan is to complete this line as well with a second, mirror-imaged one.