AiCROV designs a filling machine to compete in Europe
«Aicrov dissenya una envasadora per competir a Europa» — El Punt Avui, 12 May 2012, in Catalan
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Original headline
«Aicrov dissenya una envasadora per competir a Europa»
Our translation: «AiCROV designs a filling machine to compete in Europe»
Standfirst
«La marca tarragonina ofereix un sistema per minimitzar les alteracions en els líquids envasats»
Our translation: «The Tarragona company offers a system to minimise alteration in the liquids it packages»
By Marc Rovira, Tarragona.
Our translation (extract)
Between 15 and 18 May Barcelona hosts Hispack, a trade fair dedicated to solutions and innovations in packaging design and machinery. Around 700 companies are expected, among them Aicrov of Tarragona, which develops technology that makes it possible to fill drums and large containers automatically, and which has just completed a machine that should let it compete on equal terms — the same reliability, at a lower price — with those built in Germany, which dominate the market.
Aicrov began six years ago as a distributor and service agent for German machinery, but over time the company ended up developing its own solutions. “We had the technicians and the trained staff, and we said to ourselves: why don’t we build them ourselves?” explains Albert Rovira, engineer and head of the company.
Not a prophet at home. With its unit in the Riu Clar estate in Tarragona, this good understanding with the petrochemical sector is no surprise, but Rovira qualifies it: “we work across the whole country but, curiously, we have very few customers from Tarragona.” And if the machines have proved useful for chemicals, might they not be valid for other sectors too? “Until now it seemed the sectors had to be mutually exclusive, and that those of us working with the chemical industry could not also work in food.” Aicrov’s challenge is to bring its machinery into two specific sectors: food and pharmaceuticals.
That is why the company’s fifteen staff have spent the last seven months working on a machine able to pass the certifications required to handle those products — generally more sensitive, and with stricter hygiene requirements, than anything coming out of a petrochemical plant.
Albert Rovira puts it like this: “if a fly lands in a drum being filled with engine oil, the consequences are minimal. If the fly lands in a product destined for food use, that changes everything.” Precisely for that reason, their latest machine automates and speeds up the process of screwing on the caps that seal the drum once it is full.
Risks kept to a minimum. The point is to minimise handling time and to leave the product exposed for as short a time as possible. With that in mind, the machine can work with four drums on a single pallet.
The pallet of empty drums enters at one side of the line and, seconds later, the machine delivers them packed, having completed a process of uncapping, filling and screwing the cap back on.
The head of Aicrov says that “there is no similar technology here, until now. Anyone who wanted it had to go to Germany and pay dearly for it.” What matters about the tool is that “the drums are practically always closed” — a strong point to exploit in sectors whose priority is that the product stays immaculate.
Although this type of machine works four times more slowly than a linear platform filling containers conventionally — the 100 or 120 drums filled in one case drop to 30 — Rovira points out that there are sectors whose overriding priority is not speed, which makes the machine interesting for the market.