Container Cleaning Equipment for the Beverage Industry

Each company in the beverage industry relies on a unique flavor to help their product stand out from the multitude of choices offered to consumers. Not only must the flavor be unique, but it is important that the flavor be consistent, to bring back those drinkers who fall in love with the taste! For this and other reasons, beverage packagers must protect against contamination during their packaging process. Of course this means mixing or creating a product that is pure, but even once the product is made, contaminants can sneak in through bottles and containers. Container cleaning equipment is used by the beverage industry to remove contaminants from the bottles before the product is introduced.

BOTTLE RINSING MACHINES

Bottle rinsing machines are normally used to clean the inside of bottles before they reach the filling machine to receive product. The bottle rinser removes dust, debris and other contaminants that may exist in the container such as residue from the creation of the container, simple dust from storage, other debris from transportation or contaminants from any other source. These machines can handle both glass and plastic bottles in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and the automatic machines will typically invert containers over a rinse basin before blasting the inside with clean air, water or other cleaning solution. Semi-automatic bottle rinsers are also available for lower production projects. Semi-automatic rinsers require an operator to manually place and remove bottles from the cleaning machine.

BOTTLE VACUUMS

Bottle vacuums also remove debris from the inside of a bottle or container, but without inverting the containers. These machines use special nozzles that will blast the inside of the bottle with air, but will also seal the opening of the bottle to create a vacuum and remove the loosened debris to an easily cleanable waste reservoir. These machines may be used as an alternative to inverting rinsing machines when bottles are too small, too large or otherwise hard to hold when inverting. Just like the inverting rinsing machines, vacuums can handle plastic and glass containers and are also available in both automatic and semi-automatic models.

BOTTLE WASHERS

Our definition of bottle washers differs slightly from a bottle rinser in that the washer may clean the outside or both the inside and outside of a container. These machines are most often used for larger bottles and quite often seen in the Bottled Water Industry. Three and five gallon bottle washers may be combined with a filling machine and capping machine to quickly and efficiently prepare bulk bottled water. There are, however, other custom uses for bottle washers when storage or manufacture of bottles may leave an unwanted residue. These machines, like all container cleaning machines, can be custom manufactured to meet the individual needs of the container being used for packaging the beverage.

While container cleaning equipment helps beverage packagers to keep product pure and flavor consistent, they work their magic in other industries as well. To learn more about bottle rinsers, bottle vacuums and bottle washers, visit the container cleaning section of the Liquid Packaging Solutions website, or call a Packaging Specialist at LPS today.