Case Study Overview
Operating from a railway arch in Herne Hill, Canopy Beer Co, owned and run by Matthew and Estelle Theobalds, produces a core range of beers (such as their citrusy hoppy best seller, Brockwell IPA), supplemented by one-off and seasonal brews. Estelle and Matthew's canning aims were...
- Bring canning in-house
- 1,000 cans per hour & easy to operatae
- Compact machine due to limited space
We supplied, installed and commissioned an American Beer Equipment (ABE) CraftCan15 canning line, and an STS S1/Z AVV linear labelling machine to label the cans.
In their own words ...
'Canopy are garden shed tinkerers, have-a-go heroes, always willing to chance a stubbed toe in the pursuit of learning and trying. In the spirit of having a go, we (Matthew and Estelle) moved our doing and making to a railway arch in Herne Hill, south London, where it turned out there was an urgent craft beer shortage, so we set up a brewery. Kit was shipped in from around the country and as quickly as bits were bolted on they were upgraded, replaced with better, shinier, newer and bigger bits until, like the Iron Man, a strange but beautiful creature took shape. And from this strange misfit of a brewery came forth beer, and the people of London liked it. With an on-site tap room and a loyal local following, we have quietly grown our capacity tenfold from our original tiny brewery.
We have always kept our packaging processes in-house in order to maintain control over the product quality, but our manual bottling was laborious and inefficient. It became clear to us that canning was the future and the future was now. Cans of course have the benefit of being both lighter and much more compact than bottles, which is a real point for consideration in a brewery that operates on just 1500sq feet. Having tested the water with mobile canning, we knew that in order to commit to the format we needed to invest in our own canning line. We needed a compact machine to suit our compact brewery, but we wanted the highest quality we could afford. We wanted a machine that could fit around our otherwise manual brewery, manageable by our small brew team, that could operate at around 1,000 cans per hour, with the option of both 330ml and 440ml cans. Having done extensive research on the smaller canning options we knew that the ABE CraftCan 15 was the one for us, and so we got in touch with the team at Vigo to get our order underway. I think they were quite surprised that we didn't dither over the options more, we just said "I want that one, please" and off we went!'
Estelle Theobalds, Canopy Beer Co
Feedback
'We had used Vigo for smaller pieces of equipment and knew that they also commissioned bigger bits of kit, so we were confident that their relationship with ABE would give us the canning solution we required.
The engineering team from Vigo who came to install the machine did an absolutely sterling job, altering the orientation of parts of the line on site in order to achieve best fit in the space. The line itself has run impeccably since installation and we have exceeded our expectations in terms of the number of cans we have put through it. The savings that we have made on having our own line rather than using mobile canning solutions; along with the flexibility, ease of use and greater control over beer quality mean that all in all we are delighted with the equipment and service provided by Vigo.'
Estelle Theobalds, Canopy Beer Co
