Conveyor system halts brewing material handling nightmare
Use of a mechanical conveying system helped one brewer handle higher product demand.
Theakston’s Brewery in the United Kingdom has relied on traditional brewing methods in crafting its range of beers for 136 years, but this same commitment toward some of its material handling operations threatened to squelch increasing product demand.
Every week, from the inception of the brewery until the start of the new millennium, Theakston’s received a delivery of 280 50kg sacks of malt directly to the brew house door. Each sack, by tradition, was manually hoisted to the roof space and prepared for use. “The manual hoist, which took two men to operate, was used to transfer enough of the sacks to a third floor in the roof space where they were stored ready to be opened and discharged into the grist mill to start the brewing process,” says Head Brewer Bill Wilson.