Which filling machine for your product
Almost every AiCROV machine can fill virtually any industrial liquid. That is not a slogan: it is how the range is built.
What changes from one product to the next is not the machine. It is what happens inside the filling unit, and how much of the operation you want a person to be part of.
What decides the machine
Three things, and none of them is the product:
How much you need to produce. Containers per hour, and how many hours a day. This is usually the first number that narrows the range.
What you fill into. Jerrycans, pails, drums, IBCs (totes) — and whether they arrive on a pallet, one at a time, or on a conveyor. Every container format has machines across the whole range, from semi-automatic to fully automatic.
How much you want automated. And here there is a reason that has nothing to do with output.
Automation is also a safety decision. The more aggressive the product, the more we would automate, simply because automation is what takes the operator out of the filling area. With a basic machine the operator is next to the container while it fills. With an automatic line, the pallet goes in, the machine works and the operator is somewhere else. For sulphuric acid, for a solvent, for anything that burns or gives off vapour, that distance is worth more than the cycle time it buys you.
What the product decides
Everything inside the filling unit.
How the container is filled. Under the bunghole, for products that neither foam nor need protecting from the air. By immersion, with the nozzle going down to the bottom and rising with the level, for products that foam or that must not be aerated. Or following the product without touching it, with the nozzle a few millimetres above the surface as it comes up.
The materials in contact with the product. AISI 316L as standard, and more than eighty nozzle combinations in other materials for the products that eat it.
And how the nozzle itself is driven. This is the part nobody talks about, and it is often what decides whether a line works or makes a mess.
Bunghole or open mouth: why the nozzle has to be different
A drum with a bunghole and an open-top pail are not the same problem.
In a push-type nozzle the product leaves at an angle, and as the nozzle closes the jet swings further out to the sides. Inside a drum, with the nozzle through the bunghole, that does not matter. Fill an open-mouth container the same way and the product sprays against the walls and out of the container.
For open-mouth containers you need a pull-type nozzle, where the jet comes straight down. That solves the direction. It does not solve the pressure: if the fine-filling stage arrives at full pressure you have turned the nozzle into a pressure washer, and it splashes anyway. So the machine also has to control flow and pressure through the dose, and ease off as it closes.
Nozzle type, jet geometry, flow and pressure control. Three decisions that depend on your container and your product, and that are made before the machine is built.
An example: filling grease
Grease looks like the simplest thing in the world to fill. It is one of the hardest, and it shows why the filling method matters more than the machine.
Fill grease from the top of the container and let it fall to the bottom, and it drags air in on the way down. Because grease is so dense, those bubbles cannot rise out again. They stay in, and they occupy volume without adding mass.
So the scale still reads ten or fifteen kilos short of the target weight, while the container is already full to the brim and starting to overflow. Not because too much product went in — because the product went in mixed with air.
The way to fill grease is the opposite: the nozzle goes down to the bottom of the container, opens there, and fills while staying around twenty to twenty-five millimetres above the level of the grease already in the container, rising with it. No fall, no air, and the weight on the scale is the weight in the container.
That is the kind of detail that does not appear in any specification sheet and decides whether a line works.
We fill by weight. Never by volume. And that decides how much you have to clean.
Every AiCROV machine fills by weight. We do not build volumetric machines, and that is a deliberate choice with a consequence most buyers only discover later.
A weight filler does not need an intermediate product tank. The nozzle connects directly to your pipe. The product goes from your process into the container, and nothing else touches it.
A volumetric machine cannot do that. A flowmeter or a mass meter needs constant pressure and flow to give a reading it can trust, so the machine carries an intermediate tank, usually on top, to feed the nozzles steadily. A piston filler has to draw the product into the cylinder first and then push it into the container.
Now count what has to be cleaned when you change product. With a volumetric machine: the intermediate tank, the pipework, the three-way valve between tank, nozzle and piston, and the nozzle. With ours: the nozzle.
For anyone who needs cross-contamination as close to zero as it gets — fragrances, agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, food — that is not a detail. It is the difference between a changeover of minutes and a changeover of hours, every single time.
And then there is how you work
Two companies making the same product do not run the same way. Their operators are not trained alike, their maintenance teams are not organized alike, their engineering departments do not decide alike. One plant wants the operator in control of every step; another wants the machine to run alone.
The product, the container and the output narrow the range. How you work decides which one of those is right for you. That is why our first step is a conversation and not a quotation.
Filling by product group
- Fragrances and essences — compounds, flavours and essential oils, where a trace of the previous product costs more than the container.
- Agrochemicals and liquid fertilizers — many actives on one line, and a season that does not wait.
- Flammable products and solvents — static, classified zones and an explosion proof design that covers the whole assembly.
- Detergents, cleaning products and surfactants — foam, and why weight filling ignores it.
- Acids, bases and aggressive products — material selection, and keeping the operator away.
- Lubricants and greases — density, air and the example above.
- Food and beverage — food-grade construction and hygienic design.
- Fine chemicals, bulk pharma and cosmetics — actives, intermediates and cosmetic bulk, where every container has to be accounted for.
- Water treatment chemicals — dosing products, mostly in IBCs.
- Resins and adhesives — the chemistry that sets, and a filling unit that has to survive it.
Products we have filled
Not a catalogue of what we could do. A list of what has actually gone through our machines.
Chemicals
Acids, including hydrochloric, sulphuric, nitric and hydrofluoric · caustic soda and other bases · detergents, disinfectants and cleaning products · solvents · lubricants · oils · gels and creams · chlorine-based products · fragrances · essential oils · coolants and antifreeze
Petrochemicals
Fuels: petrol, diesel and kerosene · oils · lubricants and greases · solvents · antioxidants and stabilizers · fuel additives · acids · cooling fluids
Agrochemicals
Fertilizers · herbicides · fungicides · insecticides · disinfectants · bactericides · pesticides · plant growth regulators
Food
Oils: olive, sunflower, corn, palm, coconut · butter · sauces: soy, barbecue, ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard · juices · concentrates: stocks, sauces, juices · syrups · colourings · preservatives
If yours is not on the list, it does not mean we have not filled it. It means we have not written it down yet — tell us what it is.
Which machine fits your line
Any AiCROV machine can fill these products. What decides which one you need is not what you fill — it is how many containers per hour you have to produce, in what format, and how much of the operation you want automated. Every container format, from a one-litre canister to a 1,500-litre IBC, has machines across the whole range, from semi-automatic to fully automatic.
What the product decides is everything inside the filling unit: whether it is filled by immersion or under the bunghole, the materials in contact with it, and how the nozzle itself is driven — push or pull, two-stage coarse and fine opening or proportional, and whether the process needs flow control and continuous pressure.
That is why our first step is a conversation and not a quotation. Tell us your output, your containers and your product, and the configuration follows.
LSG — semi-automatic weigh filling machine for jerrycans and small containers
Semi-automatic weigh filling machine for jerrycans and small containers. No installation: connect power, air and product, and it is ready to fill.
LSB — semi-automatic weigh filling machine for drums
Semi-automatic drum filling machine for 30 to 250 litres: it weighs every drum as it fills, comes preconfigured and is simple to run.
LSC — semi-automatic weigh filling machine for IBCs
For plants that only fill IBCs (totes): quick to set up and configure, and available in an explosion proof version.
SP1 — semi-automatic weigh filling machine for containers on a pallet
Semi-automatic weigh filling of jerrycans, drums and IBCs on a pallet: the operator positions the nozzle and the machine fills to the net weight.
SP2 — semi-automatic filling line for containers on a pallet, with conveyors
Semi-automatic filling of drums and IBCs on a pallet, from 20 to 1,500 litres, by weight, on a preconfigured machine.
SP25 — weigh filling machine with motorised nozzle positioning
This is the machine in the range where the operator stops moving the head by hand. Travel in X, in…
SP3 — automatic filling machine for drums and IBCs on a pallet
With the Robot Filler, this is the most automated machine we build. The operator does not intervene during the cycle…
Robot Filler — fully automatic robotic filling machine for drums and IBCs
Robotic filling of jerrycans, drums and IBCs on a pallet: 3D vision finds each container, then the robot uncaps, fills, caps and seals.
EL2-B — in-line automatic drum filling machine
Automatic in-line filling of steel and plastic drums from 60 to 250 litres, by weight, with uncapping, capping and sealing stations.
EL2-E — in-line automatic filling machine for jerrycans and small containers
Automatic in-line weigh filling machine for liquid and viscous products in metal or plastic canisters, pails and jerrycans with a rectangular base.
Tell us about your product, your containers and your output.
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