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Walsall Engineering toast Aston Manor success

“Walsall Engineering has been very proud to be involved in the Aston Manor Project at Tiverton in North Devon,” reported Director Steve Chorley. “Not only has it been interesting to work with a dynamic growing company on an unusual project, but has been a great opportunity to showcase a lot of what the company is all about.”

Converting an old glass line into a canning line is a project that not many people can say they have been involved in. When Aston Manor approached Walsall Engineering about how they could support the project, it became very apparent that the company’s in-depth technical capability and experience in the food, beverage and packaging industries meant they could do a substantial amount of the necessary project works.

Working as a team, the initial phase of the project was to remove and transfer certain canning equipment from the recently closed Berkshire Brewery in Reading, such as the can rinser & filler and the empty can feed system. Frederick Smith Electrical disconnected all of the equipment to be relocated and prepared the Tiverton plant by removing the electrical installation associated with all on line redundant machines and conveyors to enable the removal and installation of the transferred equipment.

The complete old full bottle conveying system was converted and new full can conveyors were designed, manufactured and installed by Walsall Engineering to complete the new re-engineered line. The metal slat bottle conveyors had to be stripped down in-situ and converted to run with plastic slat and modular plastic belts. Also, a complete new guide rail system was retrofitted throughout for the specific handling of cans.

Withregard to the line conversion, Frederick Smith completed the electrical installation for the new full can conveying system and worked in conjunction with Controlrite (www.controlrite.com) who specialise in software and automation and were involved in the upgrade to the line control systems. Controlrite designed a new line control philosophy, providing the software to support this and control panel designs for Frederick Smith to work to. This involved modifying an existing control panel and supplying a new panel for the packaging end of the line. The software for the full can conveying system was completely commissioned by Controlrite’s control engineers and was handed over to Aston Manor within 2 weeks of start up supported by a full set of documentation.

As part of the project, Walsall Engineering refurbished the filler clean room replacing all the Makralon panels and supplying stainless steel covers over low level empty can conveyors. The can rinser was also modified with new can twists supplied throughout the line as part of the overall contract, with Procan working as part of the team fabricating the can twists.

Steve Chorley commented, “We worked closely with Aston Manor throughout and can reflect on the success of this project as testimony to the capability of Walsall Engineering.”

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