Single-serve champions

Dairy Foods, Dec, 1998 by Jack Mans

In the first detailed look at a Milk Chug operation, Dean's revamped Chemung, Ill., plant shines

With their brilliantly colored full-body labels and uniquely shaped caps, Dean Foods' Milk Chugs are the hottest items in the hottest category in the dairy industry.

"Growth has been unbelievable. We have eight lines in five plants running Chugs and we can't keep up with demand," says Gary Flickinger, V.P.-operations & engineering.

"Kids love them, especially the chocolate," says Plant Mgr. Tom Condon. "We gave them out at our house at Halloween last year and we kept running out. I had to keep calling the plant to bring over more."

Chugs are packaged in 8-, 16- and 32-oz sizes. Whole milk chocolate is the most popular flavor and the company just introduced 1% strawberry flavor in the 8-oz size. In addition to whole milk chocolate and strawberry, 8-oz Chugs are available in a 1% chocolate variety.

Flavors for 16-oz are whole, 2% and skim milk; whole and 1% chocolate; half & half and whole eggnog. Quarts are available in all of the 16-oz flavors plus an extra rich eggnog and buttermilk.

After piloting the single-serve bottles and getting the bugs out of the packaging operations at its Mayfield Dairy in Athens, Tenn., Dean is now producing Chugs at Chemung, Ill., Orlando, Fla., Sharpsville, Pa., and Salt Lake City. Plants are also producing the product under regional brand names like Reiter, McArthur and Cream o' Weber in addition to the Dean label.

Fittingly, one of the first of the Dean facilities to run the product is the plant in Chemung. Chemung, which became Dean's second plant (after Pecatonica, Ill.) in 1927, has run a full line of dairy products from the beginning and eventually earned the nickname the "Mother Plant" because of the breadth and significance of its operations.

In addition to Chugs, Chemung, which has been expanded a number of times over the years to its present size of 200,000 sq ft, runs cultured products and a full line of milk and byproducts in gabletop cartons and plastic jugs. And as the distribution center for the Midwest, it has the largest cooler in the entire Dean Dairy Group.

"Chemung has always been one of our top plants. It has always made excellent chocolate milk, so when we standardized on chocolate milk for Chugs across the country, we adopted the Chemung formula," says Flickinger.

Two lines, 600 bpm

Chemung began running Chugs in October 1997 on two lines - one running 8- and 16-oz bottles at 375 per minute each, and one running quarts at 200 per minute. Bottles for the 8/16-oz line are received in large boxes and quart bottles are packed in layers on pallets.

"We purchase the bottles, but there's no reason we couldn't blow mold our own. Dean was one of the first dairy companies to make its own bottles and it's now one of our core competencies," says Flickinger.

The distinctive Chug design is suggestive of an old-fashioned glass milk bottle; the wide-mouthed, ribbed cap resembles an old-style, crimped paper cap. The Chug bottle has been such a success that it is protected as a trademark of Dean Foods. In addition, Dean has obtained a design patent on the cap.

To start the small bottle operation, the bottles are dumped into an unscrambler that stands them up single-file on a conveyor. Bottles then pass through a machine that inverts them, blows sterile air up into them to remove dust or contaminants and then places them right side up on the exit conveyor.

As bottles leave the cleaner, they are split into two lanes that pass by an accumulation table. This is basically one large conveyor or a series of parallel conveyors onto which bottles are diverted if there is a shutdown further through the system. When a machine stops, bottles are held back on the main conveyor and additional bottles slide onto the accumulation table. When the downstream machine starts running again, controls tell the accumulation conveyor to start feeding bottles back onto the main conveyors.

"Chug lines have a lot of very complex equipment and run at higher speeds than our other packaging equipment, so we must have accumulation tables to compensate for delays," says Condon.

From accumulation, bottles go to the sleeve labeler. The labels are cylindrical tubes of PVC that are wrapped on a roll. The labeler pulls the label down, cuts it to the proper length and slides it over the bottle. The Chug labels are reverse-printed to achieve their vivid colors and glossy finish. After the labels are in place, the bottles pass through a short heat tunnel that shrinks the labels into place.

Another accumulation table is in place as the bottles converge back into one conveyor on their way to the filler/capper. This unit, which has 36 filling nozzles and 12 capping heads, is a standard dairy machine.

"These fillers are doing an excellent job in all of our plants, so there was no reason to look for something exotic," says Condon.

The 38-mm extrusion molded caps used on all size Chug bottles are unique in the industry. They are a joint development of Dean and the cap manufacturer. Along with a tamper-evident ring, the caps have an internal plug that fits down inside the top of the bottle to enhance leak-proofing.