South African glass bottle manufacturer Consol has reduced the CO2 footprint at its flint glass manufacturing plant in Nigel, Gauteng, South Africa, by adopting a decentralised drive system developed and by supplied by drive engineering company SEW Eurodrive. The glass manufacturing process requires a considerable amount of energy and Consol, which has an estimated capacity to produce more than one million glass containers a year, introduced a number of measures in its production process in 2011 to reduce its power consumption. The SEW Eurodrive Movigear mechatronic drive system implemented at the glass bottle manufacturing plant has over ten stations, each of which can be used to form four bottles simultaneously, and each station is operated using 18 servomotors. SEW Eurodrive electronics division manager Norman Maleka says that environmentally conscious businesses in South Africa can reduce energy consumption by up to 50% when making use of the Movigear drive system. This system demands the highest motor efficiency due to its permanent field synchronous motor, which complies with efficiency class IE4 (Super Premium Efficiency).
