Many successful companies in the beverage industry initially started unobtrusively and on a small scale. Experiments were often carried out at home before being developed and finally put into practice.
The career of Coopers Brewery in Australia also began in a similar way. In this case, it all started when Thomas Cooper brewed ale for his sick wife following a handed-down family recipe. It was not only Thomas’ wife Ann, however, who was enthusiastic about the tasty home brew. The neighbors also tried it and were then keen for more.
The news of Thomas Cooper’s ale spread like wildfire and, before the former Englishman knew it, he was supplying his Sparkling Ale to a multitude of customers. As if that were not enough, Cooper introduced another successful product to the regional market in the form of Extra Stout.
“We are now engaged in the brewery business,” wrote Thomas Cooper to his brother John in the year 1862, the year in which Coopers Brewery was established in South Australia.
To this very day, Coopers Brewery has remained a family brewery. The company therefore enjoys a unique position in Australia. The brewery is managed by the fifth generation of the family in the person of Dr Tim Cooper. Dr Cooper is actively supported by other family members at management level.
Coopers Brewery is currently the third-largest brewery in Australia. At the present time, Coopers’ market share in the premium beer market is 12%, and this is the fastest growing segment of the beer market.
The aspect that was particularly important to founder Thomas Cooper, namely the brewing of beer of outstanding quality, has been retained over the generations.
According to Dr Cooper, “times have changed and the brewery has grown, but the quality of our beers has stayed the same.”
“Coopers quality is still our passion,” comments Marketing Manager Glenn Cooper.
Expanding products
The range offered by the brewery has expanded with time. Today, along with Sparkling Ale and Best Extra Stout, the company produces Original Pale Ale, Mild Ale, Premium Lager, Premium Light, Dark Ale, and Extra Strong Vintage Ale.
Added to these is the non-alcoholic Birell, a Carlsberg product manufactured under license.
Ale has been a sales hit in Australia and abroad. The fact that many Australian’s appreciate an ale is clearly shown by the sales proportion of Coopers branded products. 66% of total sales is achieved with Pale Ale, and a further 18% is attributed to Sparkling Ale.
Best Extra Stout, Premium Lager, Premium Light, Birell, Dark Ale, and Extra Strong Vintage Ale follow in the order of beer sales. Pale Ale and Sparkling Ale are also the most popular export products within the beer range. The main export market is the U.S.A., followed by Europe.
The level of interest in Coopers’ premium quality beers that can be discerned in these markets is modest, but also continuously increasing. Coopers Brewery continues to be particularly strong in the domestic market in South Australia where the company holds a 21% share in the bottled beer market and a 27% share in the draft beer market.
Five years ago, in order to promote distribution in other parts of Australia, the company established a distribution specialist in the form of Premium Beverages, which operates outside the core region. It is evident that the name alone of Premium Beverages is in total harmony with Coopers’ philosophies.
While Coopers Brewery holds an 80% share in Premium Beverages, the remaining 20% is in the hands of American Beverage Distributors, who facilitated the importation of Budweiser.
Other company pillars:
It is interesting to see that, building on history, Coopers Brewery also appears to feel an obligation to those who brew beer for a hobby, and offers them an extensive range of home brewing kits — a total of 19 in number. These are to be found in supermarket chains as well as in home brewing specialty stores. Home brewing kits can also be ordered on the Internet.
Believe it or not, Coopers Brewery is currently the world’s largest provider of home brewing kits. Exports go to 14 countries worldwide, including Europe, Asia and North America.
In addition to home brewing kits, Coopers Brewery has discovered another business area for itself: malt extract. And the company also excels in this area. With seven different varieties of malt extract, Coopers is the largest Australian exporter of malt extract.
Coopers produces about 5,000 metric tonnes of malt extract every year. This is supplied to Australia’s food industry as well as to the United States, Canada, Japan, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Korea.
With a total turnover of 141 million Australian dollars, figures still show that, in spite of all its success, Coopers Brewery is in no way resting on its laurels. In the last five years, overall sales have risen by a total of 39 million Australian dollars.
From 2006 to 2007 alone, sales figures have grown by just under 18 million Australian dollars. In 2007, Coopers Brewery realised a total turnover of 141 million Australian dollars with a staff of 116 employees.
Such growth rates have been made possible by Dr Cooper’s ground-breaking decision to invest in a new brewery. By 1997, it was apparent that there was no more available at the former brewery for planned future growth. Coopers purchased a brownfield site in Regency Park a north-western suburb of Adelaide , where Dr Cooper took three years to design and construct a new brewery, which allowed for future growth in demand.
At the same time, technical solutions of the highest quality were chosen for the brewery while it was still under construction. The first meetings with KHS were held in 1996. KHS equipment that has already been installed in the new brewery – the home of Coopers since 2001 — includes an Innokeg Till Transomat 5/1 keg line, an Innopack Kisters WP wrap-around packer, an Innofill DRS ZMS filler, which is virtually pre-destined for bottling beer with low oxygen pickup, and an Innopas P pasteurizer, and Innoket SE with potentially world-record-breaking performance.
“We are extremely satisfied with KHS equipment. For this reason, and also because KHS again presented us with precisely the solution we needed, the decision was quite firmly made in favor of our trusted supplier when it came to our latest investment in labeling equipment,” says Dr Cooper.
KHS provides exactly what Coopers Brewery needs in the truest sense of the word. The modular KHS Innoket SE 2090 labeling machine, designed especially to meet Coopers’ requirements, is even a world first. The reason is that this labeling machine, with a pitch circle of just less than 2.40 meters, achieves a labeling performance of up to 72,000 bottles/hr for the first time.
“Many people did not think that this high output was feasible, but KHS has won through. Our Innoket SE passed the acceptance tests with top marks – both with regard to the quality of the labeled products and with respect to the high performance capability,” explains Dr Cooper.
Ready for all eventualities
Today, the Innoket SE labels all styles of beer bottled by Coopers Brewery in glass bottles. The company currently relies mainly on the 375-ml size, but 750-ml are provided for three of the naturally conditioned ales. From the point of view of the Innoket SE, this range of glass can be extended at any time, as the labeling machine is equipped for processing widely differing bottle sizes and shapes. The glass bottle is the bottle type of choice for Coopers Brewery.
75% of Coopers’ beers produced are supplied to the consumer in glass bottles. Another 22% goes to the restaurant trade in kegs, and the remaining 3% of beer sales is distributed in aluminum cans. At present, the Innoket SE works exclusively using the cold glue labeling process. But this too must not be looked upon as fixed. The modular design of this generation of labeling machines provides plenty of flexibility to meet future requirements. If, at a later date, Coopers Brewery should decide to apply adhesive-pressure labels, for example, either additionally or exclusively, this wish can be easily implemented and without any problems by changing labeling stations on the central labeling carousel.
The base version of the Innoket SE has been deliberately kept simple. It is comprised of a table structure and the central labeling carousel mentioned above. This labeling carousel can be flexibly equipped with a wide variety of different labeling stations. Wet glue, self-adhesive, hot glue, or roll-fed units in any combination – everything is feasible. Also possible is the docking of a camera module.
“With the Innoket SE, we are exceptionally well-equipped for all future consumer requirements relating to the label dressing of our bottles,” says Dr Cooper.
The Innoket SE at Coopers Brewery is currently equipped with three cold-glue labeling stations that apply the body and shoulder labels for the bottles remaining on the Australian market, and additional back labels for exported products. Wet glue labeling technique involves spreading glue over the entire surface of the paper labels. In the Innoket SE concept, the stations are driven by a servo motor. Movements within the stations are controlled by an external double cam race. Glue segments remove the labels gently from the labeling magazine and guide them with an optimum peeling angle to the gripper cylinder, which finally applies the label to the bottle. Long life of KHS cold glue labeling stations The tried and tested KHS cold glue labeling stations are characterized by a long service life. Overhauls are only required after 20,000 hours of operation at the earliest. Several factors are responsible for the long service life of KHS cold glue labeling stations. The first important feature is the rotation of the glue segments that prevents vibration, overload, and wear.
Other aspects, which contribute to the long service life, include direct drive without additional gear stages, a conical coupling without play, and multiple labyrinth seals. Added to this is the advantage of the external oil circulation lubrication system. The quantity of lubricant and its distribution are exactly defined. All lubrication points are automatically monitored. This system ensures lubrication regardless of station rotation. For cleaning purposes, the labeling station is equipped with an integral hot water spray, which selectively flushes off the gluing segments as well as the glue drum.
According to Dr Cooper, “along with high performance, flexibility, quality, and user-friendliness, the robustness of our Innoket SE and the associated long service life are also important for us.”
The Innoket SE is equipped with the VarioDrive electronic bottle turret control system. The VarioDrive is a single unit comprised of a turret, motor, and electronic components that makes it possible to rotate containers individually – to suit the particular bottle format and style of dressing. These drives can be flexibly adapted or expanded to suit new container shapes and dressings at any time, and can be quickly programmed. If, for example, Cooper’s Brewery should ever decide to use relief or contour bottles in the future that require labels to be applied in the specified position with millimeter accuracy, combining VarioDrive with a camera module would provide a solution for this difficult task. A camera module can very easily be docked with the Innoket SE for this situation.
The Innoket ALM label hopper ensures maximum machine efficiency. With the Innoket SE, a high level of user-friendliness and maximum machine efficiency are ensured for Coopers Brewery by, among other things, three Innoket ALM label hoppers (ALM = Automatic Label Magazine) — one for each cold glue labeling station. Each Innoket ALM label hopper is designed in such a way that five additional back-up units, which are used in succession, are assigned to one active label storage unit. The operators only have to replenish labels when all the labels stored here have been used up. Each Innoket ALM label hopper assigned to a cold glue labeling station holds up to a total of 50,000 labels.
It goes without saying that the Innoket SE, which has been worked out down to the last detail, can only operate perfectly when the label and the adhesive harmonize with the technical solution. With Innocoll label adhesive, KHS is at the same time providing Coopers Brewery with the glue that is exactly matched to the application. In addition to the qualitative evaluation of the label material, which included testing the interaction between glass bottle, glue, and label, a test run was carried out in the KHS in-house laboratory under practical conditions before the label adhesive was adopted.
As Dr Cooper explains, “all this has been well worth the effort. The Innoket SE was delivered and hooked up and has been running like clockwork since then.”
All in all, for Coopers Brewery the Innoket SE represents an important building block for future success.
“Outstanding beer quality is one side of the success coin,” comments Glenn Cooper, “the perfect presentation at the point of sale, which is appropriate to outstanding beer quality, is the other.”
Dr Cooper agrees. “Coopers Brewery is ready for a new era of success; regionally, nationally, and internationally.” And at the same time, maintaining the tradition of the best quality at all levels – which is something that brewery founder Thomas Cooper would be sure to find particularly pleasing.
For further information contact:
Kurt Hofmann
General Manager, KHS Pacific,
03 9335 1211
info@khspacific.com.au
www.coopers.com.au