NEWELLEN

The SMB Technik model Newellen is 4 valve/1 head closer, intermittent acting filler/closer designed to fit the needs of a small bottler who requires high quality equipment.  Its primary intended use is in the microbrewing and small wineries industries.

The machine is compact and designed to be operated by one person.  Parallel in/out conveyors end at a common point.  This allows the operator to stand in one location to place empty bottles on the machine and remove completed bottles.  At the end of the conveyor opposite the operator, there is a star wheel.  The valves and closer are situated around the star.  The top view of the machine looks like a lollipop where the conveyors form the stem and the head is the star wheel.  Closures are fully automatic with hoppers and sorting devices.

The machine is adaptable to any of the valves and closers produced by SMB Technik.  The most common configurations for this machine are as a beer filler/capper and wine filler/corker.  The valve used for beer is our standard long tube vavle.  The wine machine uses a valve with inert gas sparging through the long tube to remove air from the bottle prior to filling.

The machine can be outfitted with valves and closers for plastic bottles, soft drinks, water (both still and carbonated), and a variety of other beverages.  It can even be outfitted with our exclusive unfilling valve for transfer champagne purposes or recovery of poorly packaged product from larger filling lines.

This machine is under development at the time of this writing (12/98).  Machine #1 is to be outfitted as a beer filler/capper and will be shown at the Japanese beer/food trade show (Brewtex) at the end of February, 1999, in Tokyo.  Two additional machines are to be built as laboratory scale soft drink fillers.  We anticipate development to be completed by the end of March 1999 and that the machine will be released for general sales at that time.