Headquartered in Italy, the business group Zignago Vetro is a European manufacturer of high-quality cosmetics and perfume containers as well as a producer of food packaging and special bottles for high-quality wines, oils and spirits, to name only the most important areas.
In addition to the plants in Italy, the group also has production sites in France and Poland. In order to produce high-value glass, high-quality raw materials are needed. This is especially important for the use of cullet. In order to be able to use cullet to a greater extent, Zignago Vetro has taken up the challenge and is now planning to operate its own cullet processing system.
One location of Zignago Vetro in Italy is Portogruaro, near Venice. Here, are in operation a regenerative furnace from SORG as well as a unit melter. To meet the increasing demand for glass containers, Zignago Vetro has expanded its capacity at Portogruaro in flint, Georgia’s green or dark green glass.
The expansion involves building a completely new production area (green field) on the company site, including hall construction and the required infrastructure. As part of the new construction of the production area, Zignago Vetro has taken the rare opportunity to optimize the production sectors from melting to packaging according to the procedures.
The new melting furnace supplied by Nikolaus SORG GmbH is a state-of-the-art regenerative end-fired furnace. With this furnace will be reached not only very low energy consumption values but also NOx emissions at the currently lowest technical level.
SORG also supplied the complete heating system (including emergency heating) as well as the control and SCADA system. The heating is done with gas. Alternatively, the heating is provided with heavy oil. The waste gas rail is intended for the later connection of an emission control system. Moreover, the furnace is equipped with a melting booster and a barrier booster as well as a refiner and throat booster, which leads to a higher melting capacity.
The glass conditioning system consists of a SORG® STW working end and two SORG 340S® tandem forehearths in F-shape. This type of tandem forehearth has a huge flexibility and is therefore very easy to install. Each of the forehearths is equipped with a stirrer system and supplies the IS tandem machines with glass.
The batch charging system was supplied by EME GmbH and is done via two IRD® dog houses by means of two EME-NEND® S2 screw chargers. This type of batch charger is characterized by a completely sealed doghouse, which eliminates the uncontrolled entry of false air and reduces dust formation. Furthermore, the EME-NEND® S chargers enable an optimal batch distribution in the glass melting and minimize wear to the screw, which ensures an increased lifetime.
The new melting plant is designed so that the melting capacity can be extended during the first furnace repair.
The construction of the furnace was carried out by SKS Iberica, the installation of the equipment parts by Nikolaus SORG GmbH.
In the middle of October 2018 the steel construction started and after a period of 42 days for the refractory assembly the plant could be heated up as planned on February 5, 2019. The production handover took place on February 22, 2019. With the start of production, the glass quality has exceeded the expectations and the energy consumption as well as the CO2 emissions were lower than predicted.