Australia’s first mobile bottling business for the craft beer industry will be fully operational, and be available to breweries on the east coast of Australia by late January.
See You Next Brew Day has been established by Mitch Campbell, teaming up with Chris Kelly from East Coast Canning. The pair realised the opportunity after Chris started mobile canning at a number of breweries in Sydney and Melbourne.
Mitch said that “in the US there are now numerous mobile bottling companies, all of which have been operating successfully for many years, and having a strong connection with East Coast Canning means we are building a significant network to help brewers navigate the challenges of packaging”.
After spending time overseas researching different Bottling technologies, Mitch and Chris settled on an innovative new model from a US supplier called Martin Robotics.
“The beauty of the machine we purchased, is the flexibility to change bottle sizes within minutes, rather than several hours” he said “this gives us some pretty nice flexibility”.
Mitch, who will operate the line, has a background in electrical explosive area equipment, a profession he says engenders very strong discipline around ensuring a quality product.
“I’ve been doing that for a long time and what that means is that like the East Coast Canning guys quality assurance, quality improvement and quality control is my life” he said.
“As with the mobile canning, once we hit our stride and settle into our equipment, we’ll have a level of monitoring that’s pretty unusual in the craft packaging world”.
The machine landed in Australia on Monday the 12th of December and once commissioned the bottling line will travel the Eastern States between Brisbane and Melbourne.
“All set up and tuned well, the line will do just less than ten hectolitres in an hour in a 330mL size. The machine is capable of spitting out bottles at a rate well over 2000 per hour.” he said.
“What that translates to is that we don’t need to be on site for that long for most jobs”.
“We will be utilizing the same online booking system as East Coast Canning, which makes the booking process for breweries simple” Mitch said.
Under See You Next Brew Day’s model, brewers can purchase their own bottles in advance and ensure they are on site when the line arrives, or alternatively SYNB can supply a pre-labelled bottle from our off-site labelling facility.
Mitch commented “It has been a conscious decision for us not to label at the same time as performing a filling job in most circumstances. We believe this will provide us more ability to give our whole attention to the filling machinery and maintain a quality end product as opposed to navigating the challenges of a labeller concurrently”.
“We understand that packaging can be expensive and difficult to navigate” Mitch said. “Our goal is for breweries of all sizes and positions in their business cycle to access cost-effective packaging from an equipment and labour perspective. Breweries can de-commission those hand loaded 2-head fillers now!”
The SYNB crew has already fielded many enquiries from brewers who have spoken to Chris whilst he is operating the canning line at breweries in NSW and Victoria.
For further enquiries contact Mitch Campbell on [email protected]
Read more: Mobile canning comes to Australia