Pumps Boost Winery’s Efficiency

A UK wine importer, maker and bottler has boosted its efficiency by replacing its pumps with MasoSine process pumps from Watson-Marlow Pumps Group.

The outcome for Norwich-based Broadland Wineries is that tanker offload times for juice have been cut by 50 percent, while the time for wine offloading has been cut by 25 percent.

Broadland processes around 28 million to 35 million liters every year for customers that include many UK supermarket chains.

The company brings in wine by the tanker load, typically 24,000 liters at a time. Its previous positive displacement pumps were aging and slow at transferring the wine from the tankers. In addition, the pumps were struggling with the concentrated, high viscosity fruit juices also delivered to Broadland to help make certain wines.

Changing to a centrifugal pump was ruled out due to the inherent risk of cavitation in the wine potentially affecting dissolved CO2 levels and the pump. The sinusoidal rotor design of MasoSine SPS pumps delivers a low shear, gentle pumping action that transfers delicate products safely without risk of degradation, the company says. Because of this, Broadland requested a trial of an SPS 400 sinusoidal pump.

The company says it saw an immediate reduction in our tanker offload time for wine to 45 minutes. It used to take an hour. Additionally, the pumps allowed it to decant in four hours, compared to one day.

Broadland Wineries subsequently ordered two MasoSine 400 pumps, which have now been running for two and a half years, serving different offload points at the site. Broadland Wineries has also placed an order for a further MasoSine SPS 400 plus two EcoSine 40 pumps. These will be used within the factory, in transportation and manufacturing processes.