Part of the LVMH group, Domaine Chandon Australia (DCA) are an Australian sparkling wine specialist and producer with genuine French heritage. DCA made the decision to collaborate with Sidel on a project to improve the efficiency of their bottling operations.
By choosing Sidel’s expertise in complete End-of-Line solutions, DCA were able to increase the utilisation rate of their manufacturing assets and produce more consistent case stacking quality on pallets, outcomes that eventually led to improved downstream logistic operations. The fully automated Cermex WB46 Wrap-Around case packer - including a partition inserter module and coupled with the PalAccess palletiser - has enabled Domaine Chandon Australia to accommodate the growing local demand of premium wine.
Chandon have a history going back decades, when Moët & Chandon started to produce premium sparkling wines outside of France. Chandon’s founder, Robert-Jean de Vogüé, first travelled abroad in the late 1950s to collaborate with winemakers in foreign countries, applying his Champagne expertise to new world sparkling wine creation. In the mid-1980s, a team of Chandon’s experts discovered Green Point, an old dairy farm in the Yarra Valley in the state of Victoria. There, the climate is cool and the soil is rich, making it the perfect spot for Domaine Chandon Australia to produce méthode traditionnelle sparkling wines.
The sparkling wine segment is currently accounting for 6.9% of the wine and cider market in Australia and expected to grow further over the next five years. This positive trajectory is due to the increasing consumer preference towards premium and more sophisticated drinks, including French champagnes. Since 2014, more and more wine lovers have been shifting from low-value wines to higher-value ones, leading to a growth of 5% and an expected revenue of USD 6.9 billion through 2018-2019.
Staying on top as sparkling wine wave sweeps across Australia
New companies are expected to enter into this segment, and to stay competitive, large industry players will have to further adopt automation as part of their production routines. What has been achieved at Domaine Chandon with Sidel is a great example of such an initiative, delivering a safer, more automated and efficient solution.
Sidel’s strong heritage in line integration for the wine and spirits market
Sidel and DCA began working on the project a few years ago, starting with a number of conceptual layouts based on the available floor space, the packaging design specifications and Domaine Chandon’s technical requirements for the equipment. Wrap-Around packing is not widely used in this industry but the Australian sparkling wine producer quickly identified the benefits of using this type of case versus the more commonly seen Regular Slotted Case (RSC) designs.
“DCA are a true pioneer, and despite the challenges they represented to couple this case design with the integration of a partition inserter module within the same piece of equipment, we were very excited to be part of this journey,” says Julien Claudin, Country Manager for Australia at Sidel. DCA’s objective for the new installation was to partner with one supplier to provide an end-to-end solution that embarked on a high level of automation for each and every step of the process.
