EL2-E — in-line automatic filling machine for jerrycans and small containers
A sequential machine. Containers advance from station to station, and on each cycle all of them move one position, so operations happen in parallel on different containers. With two filling stations, the first delivers the bulk of the weight and the second completes the final part accurately: high throughput without sacrificing accuracy — the trade-off most in-line fillers force you to make.
The operator keeps the infeed supplied and removes full containers at the outfeed. They never handle a container during the process.
Advanced series · Automatic · Containers up to 30 L
Is this the machine you need?
Yes, if you fill jerrycans, bottles or equivalent containers up to thirty litres at volumes a single-station machine cannot reach.
No, if you fill drums — that is the EL2-B — or fill on pallets, which is the SP3 and the Robot Filler. And no, if a few hundred containers a day is your volume: the LSG costs a fraction of this.
Every AiCROV machine handles virtually any industrial liquid — viscous, sticky, foaming, flammable, corrosive. What changes with the product is the nozzle, the materials in contact with it and how the dose is controlled. Not the model.
What decides the model is the container format, the throughput you need, and how much of the handling you want the machine to do. That is why our range is not organized by industry. A detergent plant and a lubricants plant filling the same drum at the same rate buy the same machine.
Two versions
Horizontal. From two to six positions, shared between filling stations — up to two — and operating stations. This is the right version when the process needs more than filling: centring, uncapping, purging, final weight check, capping or sealing. Positions not assigned are built ready for a later extension, so adding an operation in three years does not mean replacing the machine.
Vertical. From two to eight stations, all of them filling, in even numbers. A single electro-pneumatic system lowers and raises all the nozzles at once, integrated into the structure itself. This is the right version when production is what matters: many containers of the same format per hour, with no intermediate operations.
Operating stations (horizontal version)
Container centring. Two arms — one with free rollers, one with motorised wheels — hold the container by its lower part and rotate it about its vertical axis. A sensor detects the bunghole passing and stops the rotation, leaving the container in a known position.
Centring and uncapping. A head unscrews the cap once the bunghole is located and places it on the cap conveyor, which carries it to the capping station.
Purging. A lance delivers inert gas inside the container. Usually before filling, though the process may require it before capping.
Weight check. Verifies the final weight of the filled container, in a position independent of the filling position.
Capping. Automatic screwing with cap feeder, cap placer and torque-controlled head. There are versions for jerrycan caps, for two-inch screw caps and for press-on caps, and the two-inch version also accepts sealing in the same station.
How it works
1. Filling recipe, net weight and container format are selected on the operator panel.
2. Filling height and side guides are adjusted to the format, without tools.
3. Empty containers are placed on the infeed conveyor.
4. Start is commanded and the machine links cycles automatically: on each one, containers advance one position and each station performs its operation.
5. With two filling stations, the first dispenses the bulk of the weight and the second completes the final part accurately.
6. Full containers are removed at the end of the line.
Jerrycan Filling + Robot Palletizing Line EL2-E-V — Turnkey Project | AiCROV
An EL2-E-V filling jerrycans in line, with a robot palletizing the filled containers at the end of the line: a complete turnkey project, from empty container to finished pallet.
More videos of this machine
Other installations and configurations, filmed in our workshop and at customer sites.
Automatic Canister Filling, Capping & Labelling Line — Chemicals | AiCROV
Automatic Canister Filling & Capping Machine EL2-E — Lubricants | AiCROV
Automatic Canister Filling & Capping Machine EL2-E — Crop Protection Chemicals | AiCROV
Liquid Filling Machine EL2-E for 30 L Metal Drums + Capping + Sealing + Labelling + Palletizing
Automatic Jerrycan Filling Machine EL2-E — 25 L, Food & Pharma GMP Line | AiCROV
EL2-E Format Change
Filling modes: two assemblies
Two filling assemblies are available, and the choice is made when the machine is ordered: the assembly is a physical part of the machine, not a setting. Both are made of sandblasted AISI 304 stainless steel; the nozzle is AISI 316L as standard, with other materials available for demanding products.
Under bunghole filling
Normally used for products that do not foam and are neither flammable nor explosive, including dense and viscous products. The nozzle descends until it is just inside the container and fills from that position. This assembly fills under the bunghole only.
Immersion filling
Normally used for foaming products, and for flammable or explosive products. The nozzle descends to the bottom of the container, and the filling recipe chooses one of three ways of filling:
- Rising with the product: the nozzle opens at the bottom and rises as the container fills. The control calculates the product height inside the container and keeps the nozzle at that level, stopping at the top of the container, without leaving it, until the fill is complete.
- From the bottom: the nozzle stays at its lowest position for the whole fill. For extremely foaming products.
- Under bunghole: the nozzle enters just past the bunghole and fills from there, as the under-bunghole assembly does.
If your range includes foaming or flammable products, or may include them later, choose the immersion assembly: it covers every way of filling.
Machine architecture
The structure carries the positions in line and the transfer system. Each filling station has its own scale — load cell, summing box, support mechanics and weighing channel in the control system.
The machine integrates into a conveyor line, selected and quoted separately.
When the machine has several filling stations, the nozzles do not all have to be the same.
Inert gas filling (optional)
Any AiCROV machine can be supplied to fill under an inert atmosphere. It is fitted as an accessory, and it touches the nozzle, the control cabinet and the recipe.
How it is built. The nozzle carries a small passage through which the gas flows. A dedicated solenoid valve in the main control cabinet drives that flow, so the gas is part of the filling cycle rather than something an operator does alongside it.
When the gas flows is a recipe parameter, not a fixed setting. You choose to inert before the nozzle opens, during filling, after the target weight is reached, or any combination of the three — and you set how many seconds each phase lasts. Different products need different answers, and the machine stores one per product.
Why a small amount of gas is enough. Nitrogen is heavier than air. A short burst into the bottom of an empty container leaves a layer of nitrogen sitting there, and filling then begins inside that atmosphere rather than in air. As the product level rises, the nitrogen is pushed up ahead of it and stays between the liquid and the container opening. A little more at the end, before the container is capped, and the product has never touched air.
It is not always nitrogen. The gas is chosen for the product; nitrogen is simply the most common.
Inerting by overpressure is the other route: capping assemblies that pressurize the inside of the container to a few millibars immediately before the cap goes on.
And the case that is not about product quality at all. Filling a flammable product into a metal container can generate a spark as the liquid starts to flow. Displace the oxygen first and there is nothing to ignite. On some installations that is the whole reason the inerting is there.
The nozzle is interchangeable. It can be replaced by a different model or diameter without modifying the station, which means the machine can be adapted to a different product or a different container years after it was bought. How nozzles are cleaned →
AiCROVFill®
A software ecosystem, not a single function. AiCROVFill® is the whole of AiCROV’s filling software, built around one aim: to fill as accurately and as fast as the product allows — efficient in time, effective in the result — and always safely.
Final weight control and top-up. Once the nominal net weight is reached, the nozzle closes. For a set interval afterwards the system keeps watching the settled weight, and if it has fallen below the nominal value it reopens and completes the dose — as many times as needed. This is the difference between a container that reads correct at the moment of closing and one that reads correct on the customer’s scale.
Compensation for the submerged lance. In immersion filling the nozzle can stay below the product surface — because the operator has set it to fill under the level to keep a foaming product quiet, or because, near the top of a full container, it cannot rise any further without leaving the opening. A submerged lance displaces its own volume of product, and the scale reads that displacement as weight. Close the nozzle at the nominal value, draw the lance out, and the container is suddenly tens or hundreds of grams short — a fill that looked perfect now fails the tolerance. AiCROVFill® knows where the lance is: its position is controlled, so the volume it occupies inside the product is known at every moment. The control calculates the weight that volume accounts for and doses exactly that much more before closing, so the net weight is right after the lance comes out, not only while it is still in.
Automatic compensation of the product still falling after the valve closes. When the valve closes, some product is still on its way into the container. How much depends on the machine, and on conditions outside it: supply pressure, flow rate, product temperature and viscosity. If the recipe carries a fixed value for that product, AiCROVFill® uses it. If that value is set to zero, the machine learns it: container after container it measures the result and moves the cut-off point by itself, so the batch settles on the nominal weight and stays there as conditions drift.
Recipe-based operation. Filling parameters are stored per product and per container format. Changing reference is a selection on the panel, not a readjustment of the machine.
Independent weighing per station. Each filling station controls its own weight, so that splitting the dose between two stations — or across eight, in the vertical EL2-E — never costs accuracy on the individual container.
Built from parts you can buy yourself
This machine is built with industrial components from globally distributed brands — control, pneumatics, sensors and weighing elements — with no proprietary electronics or firmware anywhere in the control chain.
This matters on the day something fails. You source the spare part yourself, in your own market, at market price. Your maintenance staff work on platforms they already know. You do not wait for a shipment from Tarragona to replace a component that is on a shelf twenty minutes from your plant.
It is a deliberate design decision, and we think a machine that holds your plant hostage is not a machine you should buy.
Safety and compliance
The machine is designed and manufactured in Europe, to European machinery safety legislation, and carries the CE marking. That is our starting point for every market we ship to. Outside the EU, most markets mirror that legislation through a transposition or an equivalent framework of essential health and safety requirements, so AiCROV starts from the same design and the same risk assessment everywhere, and adapts the marking, the declaration and the documentation to the regime of the country of installation.
The design follows the harmonised framework customary in the sector: risk assessment and risk reduction to EN ISO 12100, safety-related parts of control systems to EN ISO 13849-1, electrical equipment to EN 60204-1, emergency stop to EN ISO 13850.
The risk assessment is carried out on the configuration actually supplied, not on a generic model, and the resulting measures are built into the mechanical design, the electrical design and the control software.
The machine is fully enclosed. The mechanisms are contained within the structure and there are no moving parts accessible during operation. The front is closed by opening windows that let the process be followed without opening them; opening one activates the safety circuit and stops the equipment.
At both ends, the container passes through a tunnel sized to its format: it lets the container through and prevents the operator’s hand from reaching the moving parts inside.
- Emergency stop — cuts power and pneumatic pressure and stops container transfer. Reset is manual and deliberate.
- Front window interlocking.
- Passive nozzle lock.
- Safe behaviour on failure — no residual transfer, no product flow.
Every AiCROV machine and every AiCROV line can be supplied in an explosion proof version. Where the equipment is going into an area with a risk of explosive atmosphere, protection is engineered as a specific part of the project and extends to the whole assembly — structure, stations, tool holder and fitted tools, weighing system and control cabinet — under the certification scheme that applies in the country of installation: ATEX in Europe, IECEx in many other markets, NEC in the United States. Explosion proof versions are designed for Zone 1 or Zone 2 hazardous areas, or the equivalent Class I, Division 1 or 2 under NEC, depending on the project.
On an automatic line this is the difference between a compliant installation and a machine that cannot be commissioned. A protected filling head bolted to an unprotected gantry is not an explosion proof machine.
Explosion proof filling machines →
Connection parameters — voltage, frequency, neutral and earthing arrangement, electrical and compressed air connection types — and the operator panel language are defined with you during order engineering, in accordance with the regulations and the usual practice of the country of installation. The starting point is always the CE-compliant design; the local requirements are built in from the start of the order, not retrofitted afterwards.
Technical specifications
| Type | In-line automatic, sequential, weigh filling |
| Series | Advanced |
| Containers | Jerrycans, bottles and equivalent, 1 to 30 litres |
| Throughput | up to 900 containers/hour (25 L) |
| Filling accuracy | ±0.1% of the nominal fill (to be confirmed for each case) |
| Weight scale resolution | ± 10 g |
| Inert gas filling | Available as an accessory |
| Versions | Horizontal, 2–6 positions · Vertical, 2–8 filling stations |
| Stations (horizontal) | Centring · uncapping · purging · filling · weight check · capping · sealing |
| Filling assembly | Under bunghole, or immersion (the immersion assembly also fills under bunghole or from the bottom, selected by recipe) |
| Weighing | One independent scale per filling station |
| Power | 3×380 VAC, 50–60 Hz, <10 kW (to be confirmed per project) |
| Air pressure | 6 bar (other pressures on request) |
| Working temperature | −10 °C to +45 °C |
| Product temperature | 0 °C to +130 °C |
| Product connection | 1½” male camlock |
| Weight | 1,000 kg (to be confirmed per project) |
| Enclosure | Full, interlocked windows |
| Explosion proof version | Available, whole assembly |
Frequently Asked Questions
Horizontal or vertical?
Horizontal when the process needs more than filling — centring, uncapping, purging, weight check, capping, sealing. Vertical when volume is what matters: up to eight filling stations of the same format, all nozzles raised and lowered by one system.
How does it fill fast without losing accuracy?
With two filling stations, the first delivers the bulk of the weight and the second completes the final part. Each station has its own scale and controls its own weight.
Can I add a capping station later?
On the horizontal version, yes. Unassigned positions are built ready for a later extension.
What cap types does it handle?
There are versions for jerrycan caps, two-inch screw caps and press-on caps. The two-inch version can also seal in the same station.
What is the final weight check for?
It verifies the filled container in a position independent of the filling station — an independent measurement, not the same scale confirming itself.
Can it fill flammable products?
Yes, in an explosion proof version engineered for the certification scheme of the country of installation. Flammable products are normally filled with the immersion assembly, which keeps the nozzle below the product level; inert gas filling and electrostatic grounding control are available as options.
What is the difference between the EL2-E and the LSG?
The LSG fills one container at a time with an operator. The EL2-E is an automatic line with several stations, for continuous high-volume production.
Not sure this is the right machine?
Tell us what you fill, into what container, and how many per hour. We will tell you which model fits — and we will tell you when none of ours does.
Related projects
Real installations of our filling machines in different industries.
Turnkey packaging plant for crop protection — four EL2-E-V jerrycan lines and one robot palletizer, Nutrien, Melbourne, Australia
For a new crop-protection factory in Melbourne, Nutrien wanted a single supplier and one technical contact for the whole packaging plant.
EL2-E filling and capping cell for crop-protection products, run by one operator — Nutrien, Kwinana, Australia
Nutrien’s crop-protection plant in Kwinana needed to fill 10 and 20-litre canisters automatically, with a single operator and no operator handling of the product.
EL2-E-V Filling, Capping and Labelling Line for Acids and Bases — Kersia, Poland
Kersia needed, at its plant in Poland, to fill, cap and label aggressive acids and bases in five canister sizes on one line.
EL2-E tailored to a narrow 30 L canister with two bungs, for a multinational lubricants manufacturer — Spain
A multinational lubricants manufacturer in Spain needed a fully automatic filler for its own narrow 30-litre canister with a bung on each side.
Explosion proof EL2-E with automatic nozzle cleaning for flammable cosmetic ingredients — Seqens, United Kingdom
Seqens needed to fill high-value, flammable cosmetic ingredients into four sizes of metal cans and jerrycans, in a hazardous area.
EL2-E filling and capping line for liquid fertilizers in 20 L canisters — Omnia, Australia
Omnia, a manufacturer of specialty fertilizers and bio-stimulants, needed to fill 20-litre canisters automatically, without the operator feeding the line continuously.
Turnkey GMP filling plant for lactic acid — jerrycans, drums and IBCs in one clean room, Barcelona area, Spain
A lactic acid producer for the food and pharmaceutical industries needed to fill 25-litre jerrycans, 200-litre drums and IBCs inside one GMP clean room.
Explosion proof EL2-E with nitrogen inerting for flammable solvents in cans from 1 to 30 L — Spain
A solvents producer in Spain needed to fill flammable solvents into round and rectangular cans of many sizes, all with an off-centre bung.
EL2-E filling and capping machine with automatic reject station for chemicals — Egypt
A chemicals producer in Egypt needed every canister leaving the line to be correctly filled and properly closed.
Turnkey EL2-E line with robot palletizer for adhesives in 30 L metal drums — Dynea, Norway
Dynea, a specialist in wood adhesives, needed to fill a wide range of resins and adhesives into 30-litre metal drums at high output.
Multi-format EL2-E for flammable solvents in cans from 1 to 30 L and jerrycans — Spain
A producer of flammable solvents in Spain needed one automatic machine for both cans and jerrycans in many sizes.
Multi-format EL2-E for a food ingredient — 10 and 20 L jerrycans and 1 to 5 L PET containers, Spain
A food-ingredient producer needed one line for two very different container families: 10 and 20-litre jerrycans and small PET bottles.
Explosion proof EL2-E with bung orientation and nitrogen inerting for a highly flammable product in 30 L metal drums — Russia
A producer in Russia needed to fill a highly flammable, explosive liquid into 30-litre round metal drums with a handle and an off-centre bung.
EL2-E for fragrances, from 0.5 L aluminium bottles to 30 kg jerrycans with format-change parts — Spain
A fragrance producer in Spain needed one automatic machine for very different containers, from half-litre aluminium bottles to 30 kg jerrycans.
EL2-E for fragrances in 20 L jerrycans, built to grow from one to two filling stations — Eurofragances, Spain
Eurofragances needed to fill fragrances into 20-litre jerrycans automatically, to a high cleaning standard, and wanted a machine that could grow with its production.
Early EL2-E vertical monoblock for 10 L jerrycans, built to grow from one to four stations — Spain
A producer in Spain needed to start filling 10-litre jerrycans automatically, with a machine that could grow as production grew.
EL2-E monoblock for non-flammable chemicals in 5, 10 and 20 L jerrycans — Spain
A chemicals producer in Spain needed to fill three jerrycan sizes automatically, starting with a compact machine and keeping the option to grow.
EL2-E-V with four weighing stations and proportional filling for lubricants, with labelling, coding and automatic capping — Quaker Houghton (formerly Verkol), Spain
Quaker Houghton needed to fill lubricating oils into four container sizes at high output, and to cap, label and code them on the same line.
Tell us about your product and containers
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