Keeping the wine flowing

WHEN GREENCROFT Bottling, one of the leading contract wine bottlers in the UK, approached Wideness-based expert in process automation and engineering solutions, ABM, the company was beginning development of its new Greencroft Two facility, the new home for Greencroft Bottling with potential capacity to bottle up to 400 million litres of wine per year. The engineers at ABM worked in close partnership with Greencroft Bottling’s engineering team to design and implement a state-of-the-art wine offloading and storage process plant. This plant comprises a wine intake system, storage solutions, CIP facilities, water services and a filtration system, all controlled by a custom-designed SCADA system.

This impressive new plant, which monitors quality control and wine storage processing post-transport and pre-bottling, will be implemented in phases as Greencroft Bottling’s operations transfer from Greencroft One to Greencroft Two until it reaches its full capacity. The intake system, for example, is initially capable of receiving 35,000 litres of wine per hour, but it will be upgraded over time to increase its capacity to 210,000 litres per hour. The other sections of the plant have been designed to allow similar capacity upgrades.

Accurate information

To guarantee the reliable and efficient operation of this large and complex plant and to collect the information needed for product traceability, ABM engineers developed a customised SCADA system with an intuitive graphical user interface. All control systems, however, depend on the correct operation to receive accurate information from the plant; to provide this information, ABM elected to use sensors from ifm electronic.

Several factors played a role in this decision. First, ifm offers a comprehensive range of competitively priced sensor products that meet Greencroft Bottling’s requirements. The second was that ifm sensors support IO-Link technology, a digital communication system optimised for use with sensors and actuators in industrial environments. The third factor that influenced the decision was that ABM has been using ifm products for more than a decade and has always been completely satisfied with their performance, reliability and the excellent service the company provided.

Of particular importance in this application was the support for IO-Link. Not only does IO-Link significantly reduce the amount of field wiring needed, which provides significant cost benefits on large installations such as this one, but it also ensures the control system receives accurate data, even from the most distant sensors. Other key benefits are that IO-Link allows remote sensor configuration and, if a sensor should need to be replaced, it configures the replacement automatically. A final benefit, which was vital in this application, is that IO-Link facilitates expansion – sensors can be added to an IO-Link system much more easily than to a conventionally wired system.

This first phase of the new Greencroft Two facility is now operational, with the intake section, as mentioned, catering for 35,000 litres of wine per hour. This section, which receives bulk wines from producers around the globe, also has options for filtration and heating. The storage area has wine storage tanks with a novel routing manifold that can simultaneously rework products, perform CIP operations and supply product to all the fillers.

The plant's CIP facility currently operates with five cleaning streams and is configured to allow easy expansion to eleven streams. The water services section of the plant incorporates deaerated liquor (DAL), soft water, and raw water systems, with fully pressure-controlled ring mains for DAL and soft water.

Product quality

At the heart of the installation is an ABM dual filtration skid. This uses ifm pressure transmitters as part of ABM’s advanced filtration control system to perform fully automatic integrity tests and monitor filter housing pressure differentials en route to the filler. Each filtration stream can accommodate up to 18,000 bottles per hour, and its exceptional performance guarantees outstanding product quality.

All sections of the plant make extensive use of ifm products. A total of almost 200 ifm sensors are installed, the majority of which are pressure and level types. These are complemented by temperature, conductivity and flow sensors, along with standard inductive sensors, which are used in the plant’s tanker bays. The plant also uses close to 100 IO-Link masters, and to provide instant visual status information that is visible over a wide area, five ifm light towers are installed.

To facilitate connection of the ifm devices and to ensure the reliability of those connections, the ABM engineers made extensive use of ifm’s pre-terminated connecting cables. These feature hygienic construction and, when installed, are impervious to the entry of liquids, even during plant washdown operations. More than 500 cables of various types are used on the plant.

The large scale wine processing plant has been developed for and supplied to Greencroft Bottling by ABM and sets new standards for performance, reliability and efficiency. Sensors and other products from ifm electronic are playing a major role in this achievement by ensuring that the plant’s control system always has access to dependable and accurate information about key process parameters.

Daryl Whalen-Griffiths is Greencroft Bottling’s engineering project manager: “As Greencroft Two is a new build project, it provided us with a blank slate and therefore the opportunity to be bolder in our design, including elements we don’t necessarily need now but will do in the future to enable our business to grow. We’ve created a long term solution. ABM has the flexibility and ability to think outside the box and actually come up with a viable solution bespoke to the specific needs of Greencroft Bottling. We’ve been working with the ABM team for 12 years, so they have an intrinsic understanding of our business and processes, demands and high standards of quality.”

Graham Lindsay is ABM’s project manager: “ABM’s long-standing collaboration with Daryl and the Greencroft Bottling team has given us the freedom to expand and develop the plant with a future-proof approach, creating a unique partnership. Our projects start with a mission statement and an idea, fostering a collaborative environment. This advisory role allows us to provide tailored solutions that are cost-effective and sustainable, allowing our businesses to grow together. Greencroft Bottling’s priority is always to maintain the high quality of service for its customers’ wines, which has led us to implement a specific site standard for product handling equipment, using off-the-shelf solutions to minimise costs and downtime. Our goal is always to find the most efficient solutions without overselling, ensuring we keep innovating for the future."

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