Wild Goose Canning
Mobile, small footprint canning lines
Wild Goose Canning began as an engineering and machining firm in 2009 in Boulder, CO. When co-founders Jeff Aldred and Alexis Foreman were approached by Upslope Brewing to repair their damaged canning system it was realized that they could not only they fix the canning line, but were able to build a better one from scratch.
Focus on the Customer
Wild Goose Canning (WGC) presented their first mobile canning line at the 2011 Craft Brewers Conference, and have quickly grown to one of the industry’s leading canning systems suppliers.
Since then, WGC has been satisfying a need in the craft brewing and beverage industry for small-footprint canning systems all across the globe and have enhanced their product portfolio to include both seamers and depalletizers. With the expanded product portfolio, WGC is able to successfully offer flexibility for their customers to mix and match products to provide a system that works perfectly for the customer’s needs. Every year since their inception, WGC has experienced 100% sales growth and continues to expand their global presence. The company has now reached 50 employees.
Project Challenge
The canning of products is critically important in the beverage industry. A product may only be stored for a short amount of time until it is transferred into bottles, cans or kegs in order to guarantee absolute freshness to the customer. The timing of this process can have a huge impact on the end result. A breakdown of a packaging line can be detrimental to a company and can result in huge expenses or losses in production. It’s also very important to have precise control over the speed and timing of the line to ensure accurate and efficient filling of the cans or bottles.
When Beer Ambassador, Roger Walz started at WGC as the Vice President of Sales, NORD products were already incorporated in the Wild Goose design. “It wasn’t surprising to see NORD, because Jeff and Alexis (Co-Founders of WGC) only choose high quality products for the canning line components,” says Walz, “we haven’t had any complaints internally or externally; so there is no need to reinvent the wheel.”
NORD drivesystems were initially selected as components for the WGC lines since Aldred and Foreman were looking for a gearmotor supplier with a global presence so the lines could be serviced wherever they were installed. Another key consideration was for a solution in which the VFD was mounted directly to the motor, which further narrowed the supplier options. Aldred had seen NORD previously on other brewery equipment, and NORD offered the best pricing and met all of the constraints and requirements. This paired with a reputation of quality and durable products, made it a fairly straightforward decision to choose NORD.
Application Solution
WGC’s main products are their mobile canning lines, which range from 2 to 4 fill heads and have a 27 to 42 can per minute filling capacity. Each canning line is made from quality parts and components that include NORD FLEXBLOC™ C-Face gearmotors and electric motors paired with distributed AC Vector Drives from NORD DRIVESYSTEMS.
Not only are NORD drives dependable, so are their delivery times. “If our order didn’t show up today, it’s because it was delivered two days ago,” says Lauren Daggett, the Procurement Manager at WGC, “we can always count on NORD to have stock.” Walz chimed in, “Their dependability is huge, along with the customer support that NORD provides worldwide. With big packaging lines, it’s bad when the bottling line goes down. If this does happen, you can count on NORD to have spare parts delivered quickly.”
The drive solutions include features such as hollow shaft covers, torque arms, Distributed SK200E AC Vector Drives, and NEMA C-Face motors. The NORD product used from line to line is fairly consistent. There are regular conversations between WGC and NORD’s application engineering and sales team when discussing various power options for overseas customers.
