Due to the increase in the export of its products to many different countries Cantine Pirovano needs to make frequent format changes.
The two new complete and automatic bottling lines manufactured by Bertolaso, thanks to their versatility, are suitable to meet this need by considerably simplifying the whole process.
Cantine Pirovano refines and bottles wines from different areas of Northern, Central and Southern Italy.
The company was founded in 1910 by the brothers Antonio and Costantino Pirovano, who changed their father’s business (an inn for the sale of wine) into a small artisan company for the bottling and the wholesale of wine, gradually expanding the range of suppliers over the years.
Today the company is run by the fourth generation of the family, represented by Enzo Pirovano together with his wife Laura and his eldest daughter Beatrice. The head office is located in Calco, in the province of Lecco, on an area of 45 thousand square meters, where the construction of a new facility was completed last year.
Since 1997 the Pirovano family is also owner of the Terre Bentivoglio farm, a 90-hectare estate in the Oltrepò Pavese where the main vines of the area are grown and wines like Barbera, Bonarda, Pinot nero, Pinot grigio, Riesling and Chardonnay as well as sparkling wines are produced both with the Charmat method and with the classic method.
In total, the company sells 30 million bottles every year, both in the Italian marketplace (directly to large-scale distribution or through wholesalers) and in the foreign market, the latter having grown considerably in the last 5-6 years, up to covering more than 40% of turnover.
The production is extremely diversified because it must meet the wide range of needs of a very varied market, and this is the reason why Cantine Pirovano contacted Bertolaso for the installation of two new complete automatic lines characterized by a great versatility.
Flexibility in format changes, “The motivation for purchasing the Bertolaso machines was the need for greater flexibility”, Beatrice Pirovano explains.
Two new Bertolaso lines have been installed at Cantine Pirovano: a larger one delivered in October 2020 and in operation since December and a smaller one installed in January of this year.
These are automatic modular monoblocks with rinsing, filling and capping stations, equipped with a PLC for the electronic management of all stages of the process.
The larger line, with an output from 9,000 to 12,000 bottles per hour (depending on the bottle size), is suitable for still wines and sparkling wines.
It handles bottles ranging from 250 ml to 1.5 liters, with diameters from 55 to 105 mm and heights from 180 to 380 mm, natural corks for still wines and mushroom-shaped corks for sparkling wines, aluminum screw caps, and plastic over-caps for sparkling wine bottles.
It consists of a rinser with 54 fixed nozzles, a counter-pressure filler with 72 filling valves, two corkers with 9 heads for natural corks for still wines and mushroom-shaped corks for sparkling wines, a capper with 8 heads for aluminum screw caps and a second capper with 8 heads to apply the overcaps.
The machine performs automatically: the pre-setting of the production speed according to the bottle to be handled and the regulation of the speed according to the bottle flow upstream and downstream of the monoblock, the pre-setting of the machine at the bottle format changeover with height and filling level adjustment according to the new bottle format.