Bell Tea improves speed of packaging line

The Bell Tea Company is New Zealand's largest tea company, producing brands such as Bell, Tiger and Edglets. In addition, it is one of only two companies in the world licensed to produce Twinings tea. With Bell's own brands and Twinings products, the Bell Tea Company sells almost half of the tea sold in New Zealand.

Bell tea was first produced in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1898 by founder Norman Harper Bell. Later as they expanded beyond the South Island an Auckland production facility was opened in 1967.

With the increase of production in the late 90s, the packaging lines that were the backbone of the Bell Tea Company operation were found to be unable to cope at the standard they required. This is where Norgren rose to the challenge.

With much of the original machinery dating back to the early 70s and with space at a premium, Norgren were able to work alongside Bell's engineering team to design an upgrade to the existing packaging line that would be both reliable and able to operate under harsh conditions. They were able to do this by using the VM10 Multipole Valve Island.

The Bell Tea Company selected the VM10 because of its cost effectiveness, and its versatile and compact design. Not only that, the valve island was able to produce the fast flow rate of 430 L/min required for a high-speed packaging line. With up to 30,000 cycles per day, the VM10 was the best option for the Bell packaging line.

The valve island is unique in that the valve structure is based on 10 mm width, high-performance modular valve stations that can be sandwiched together to maximum of 16 stations. This arrangement allows for the quick changing of single stations, while retaining the integrity of the other valves.

The valve islands can be configured in either 5/2 or 3/2 function or in a combination of both.