Vortec CaseStudy Berry Plastics0 pages
Berry Plastics reduces Compressed
Air Usage by 70%
Berry Plastics operates over 60 plastic manufacturing plants throughout the US. The Evansville,
Indiana based corporation also has facilities in Europe, South America, Asia and Australia. The
company’s facility in Hot Springs, Arkansas produces over 13 million plastic bottle caps per day.
Major soda manufacturers, as well as some motor oil companies, depend on the 200 employee
facility to turn out a high volume of quality products.
Targeted air lines play an important role in keeping the Hot Springs facility’s production line moving.
As the pallets of plastic resin arrive at the plant and move through production, being shaped,
printed and sorted, air lines ensure that the caps continue moving along the conveyor and that
they emerge from the molding process in the correct orientation. However, compressed air
carries a high price tag and to meet the demands for their plastic caps, the Hot Springs Berry
Plastics facility required full-time usage of all of the plant’s air compressors.
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Joe Jewell, the plant’s Compression Engineer Manager, recalls that “When we moved into our
current location, which became fully operational in January of 2011, our compressed air usage was
so high that all of our air compressors were in constant use. This was not an optimum condition
because it meant we would have to buy an additional one or rent an extra one in order to do routine
maintenance on our existing compressors. Plus compressed air is extremely expensive. So one of
our goals was to change that situation so we could conserve compressed air and reduce costs.”
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