About Cave, a division of Coop

Coop’s winery, with 27 employees and one apprentice, vinifies ‘must’ from wine grapes sourced from seven Swiss cantons. Wines from cultivating countries such as Italy, France, Switzerland, Spain, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, and California, as well as Germany, are nurtured, refined, and bottled under controlled conditions using state-of-the-art plant technology, then packaged. The product range includes white wines, rosé wines, red wines, and sweet wines. Flavored wine-based beverages complete the product spectrum. With an annual filling capacity of 36 million bottles, Cave is the largest winery in Switzerland.

The Project

The realization of the project “New Construction of the Coop Production Center Pratteln” began in 2016. The production facilities (divisions) Cave, Sunray, and Chocolats Halba are centralized at one location, and the corresponding logistics are integrated. The project includes receiving, storage, transfer, retrieval, assembly, wine fining and treatments, SIP/CIP, and the interface to filter/filler, as well as to the LMS (Line Management System from Krones AG) with the associated product flow required to vinify the must, nurture, refine, and bottle the wine. The implementation partner for this project was Rieger Behälterbau GmbH.

The Concept

All processes for the more than 450 tanks are visualized and monitored with the PCS7 control system and controlled by a Siemens S7-410-5H controller. The more than ten control cabinet fields and eleven decentralized peripherals (ET-200SP) ensure real-time communication in the processes. Operation is carried out via various modern touch panels. In the same project, the tank farm was integrated into Coop’s ERP systems via Autexis MES, connecting production with corporate planning and enabling automated, real-time transfer of orders and feedback.