With capacity of 1,200 bottles per minute the highest for any single whiskey

Seagram's bottling plant for 7 Crown is a model of in-and-out efficiency that avoids warehousing and double-handling

UNLOADING

costs

i icture a liquor-bottling line so precisely designed and controlled that incoming carload lots of case-packed empties are filled and on the road to specific customers 20 minutes later without warehousing, double handling or delay, day after day.

Add the need to process 14 different bottle sizes, to comply with the varying stamp requirements of 33 states and to satisfy the two-bottles-per-second hunger of 10 packaging lines and you have a vivid idea of the complex operations which the Seagram distillery at Lawrenceburg, Ind., takes in its 20-minute stride.

Little wonder that it is the highest-production distillery in the U. S. for a single brand of whiskey  Seagram 7 Crown. It also handles Seagram Golden Gin. On top of this, the company is saving on space and labor costs because the single handling of bottles in a continuous flow through the plant eliminates

practically all storage of either empty or filled cases. The secret is in intricate planning, split-second efficiency and pushbutton control of a non-stop, in-line operation all the way from unloading to shipping.

While Seagram's apparently complicated system is basically simple, it does require an alert packaging production staff to meet the closely coordinated requirements of daily operations.

Here's how it works at Lawrenceburg for the company, Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc.: Cases of empty bottles are conveyed from incoming rail cars or trucks to the second floor of the packaging plant. Cases are routed on long loops of conveyors totaling more than 750 ft. that serve as temporary holding areas. All cases are funneled to a dispatching station and from there they are fed to one of 10 chutes that lead to 10 packaging lines on the floor below. An 11th packaging line is kept in reserve.

Case unloading from rail cars and trucks feeds constant stream of empties to automatic conveyors (left) for delivery to second floor of packaging plant.

Hey man in the intricate routing operation is the panel operator, who sends all of the shipping cases down a doubledeck conveyor track running in front of him.