Mimi Storts, Senior Director of Planning and Operations at Hess Persson Estates, upgraded the Hess Collection bottling line. She explains, “At Hess Collection, we had only one bottling line, and it was nearing its end of life. Quality is number one, so we wanted the new bottling line to maintain that quality and retain our internal quality oversight.”

Storts also needed two capabilities the old line didn’t have: to handle the screw cap finish for one of their largest SKUs, Select Chardonnay, and run both case and bulk glass. She sent out RFPs, considered several machinery suppliers, and decided to work with a partnership of MBF North America and APS Packaging for a turnkey line. APS delivered a depalletizer that could do both glass formats, an uncaser, the conveyor equipment, a case erector to form cases, a case packer, a partition inserter, a resealer, and a unitizer ― all from the Italian equipment manufacturer MasPack, APS strategic partner.

“The unitizer (also called a palletizer) is different from others in the industry,” Storts says. “It has a robot arm that lets you create pallet patterns unique to the wine we’re running at the touch of a button. The line moved us from a manual mechanical system to a more computer-based automated one. We’ve had lots of visitors checking out their magnificent work. They’re interested in making purchases themselves because it really is a pioneering piece of equipment.”

To learn more about the Hess bottling line expansion, read about it here!