SERIOPLAST – L’ORÉAL – Settimo Torinese (TO)

New Fructis bottles

Since 1997 Fructis (L’Oréal group) is a leading brand in the market of hair-care products. Now the company has launched a renewal campaign of this product, which includes, among the other innovations, a new bottle’s design.
The new bottles, in addition of the design change, are now made of PET. These new bottles are supplied by Serioplast, which has an in-house facility at the L’Oréal plant in Settimo Torinese.

The use of PET has led to the complete rethinking of the empty bottle’s supply. Serioplast has therefore commissioned to Fava a new bulk conveying system that modifies and partially replaces the existing one.

The belt conveyors collect the bottles from the new 5 PET high-speed blow moulders (10.000bph each) and either feed directly the filling lines or load the pallettisable container (big bags).

The conveyors between the blow moulders and the filling lines have been designed to maximize the flexibility of the system. Also a ‘dynamic buffer’ has been implemented: it optimizes the functioning of the system without the need of large volumes of storage.

The big bags, inside which the bottles are stored in bulk, are handled by automatic LGV shuttles. The shuttles bring them to the automatic emptying hoppers and the beginning of the filling lines.
The big bags have to be filled with a predetermined number of bottles, therefore there is the need to count exactly the number of bottles starting from an ‘in-bulk’ condition. For this purpose, Fava has designed and manufactured two big bag loading systems composed of conveyors and counting station. The camera of the counting station recognizes the bottle’s shape and is able to count the bottles on the bulk conveyor.
Each loading station feeds two big bags. When the first big bag is filled with the pre-determined number of bottles, it switches automatically to the other, allowing the replacement of the first one.

Venturi pneumatic conveyor

Following the reorganization of its in-house facility at the L’Oreal plant in Settimo Torinese, Serioplast has assigned to Fava the execution of a new Venturi pneumatic conveyor for the ‘Frank Provost’ HDPE bottles.

The empty bottles are collected from the blow moulder and transferred to the existing silos where they are stored. The silos are connected to the filling line through a bulk conveyor system.

The Venturi pneumatic conveyor combines compact overall dimensions with flexibility and low cost.

This is the first time that this type of transport is implemented in Settimo Torinese. After the implementation of the new bulk conveyor system and counting station for the new Fructis PET bottles, it completes the entire reorganization of Serioplast in-house facility in Settimo Torinese.