Grupo Modelo, which is part of the world’s largest beer brewer A.B. InBev, is the leader in manufacturing, distribution and sale of beer in Mexico. Founded in 1925, the company has 11 breweries, produces 17 national beer brands and exports 8 of them, including the renowned Corona Extra, in 180 countries worldwide. The company recently installed the third Pneumofore UV100 Rotary Vane vacuum pump in the Tierra Blanca plant.
With nearly 100 years of experience in producing hollow glass containers for the manufacturing, distribution and sale of beer in Mexico, Grupo Modelo boasts 17 famous beer brands, including the popular Corona Extra beer in transparent glass. Customers have a clear preference for Modelo beers which account for almost 60% of market share in Mexico. To keep up with these extraordinary results, the company took relevant decisions in improving production outcome through the use of reliable and efficient equipment.
Following the latest moulding trends with IS machines to achieve higher precision, minimal waste and high-speed productivity, Modelo Group decided to invest in vacuum. As the added value of vacuum in the hollow glass moulding process is sometimes difficult to define, Pneumofore made a “vacuum-only” test on the IS machine in another mexican plant in order to evaluate the effective contribution of the vacuum capacity to the glass moulding process. The test was performed with a Pneumofore UV16 VS30 vacuum pump which was enough to supply vacuum to one IS machine with 10 double sections for wide neck glass containers. The demonstration was successfully conducted by expert glass moulding engineers. Then the vacuum was combined with low pressure to get even better results in terms of reduced rejection rate at the cold-end quality inspection and quantity of bottles per minute on each IS line.
In 2020, Modelo installed a Pneumofore UV100 vacuum pump equipped with Variable Speed drive in the Tierra Blanca plant. The air-cooled machine, with nominal installed power of 220 kW and up to 6.610 m3/h in capacity, was installed along with the existing vacuum systems. The vacuum setpoint is 280 mbar(a) connected to the IS machine at furnace no. 2. Since then, an additional furnace was prepared and all the IS lines were connected to the vacuum system, which had been upgraded with three Pneumofore UV100 in total. During the commissioning of the two additional vacuum pumps, Pneumofore engineers checked the entire system, which was properly installed according to the recommendations for the long-term efficiency. The three vacuum pumps, based on the Rotary Vane technology of Pneumofore, are capable of supplying up to 20.000 m3/h as total capacity in the vacuum level range of 50 to 450 mbar(a). The Variable Speed drives guarantee the constant vacuum level by adapting the machine’s rotation speed to the production requirements and ensure high power savings. This practice increases the glasswork productivity, by using all the high-performance potential available on the IS moulding lines of the latest generation.
