End User Satisfaction – Pinch Valves Vs. Ball Valves
The wine manufacturing company are very happy with their experience of the AKO Pinch Valves on their grape press, which have been installed for approximately 4 years.
The company previously used giant 120mm stainless steel ball valves, but confirmed that the last ball valve they had was actually not very hygienic and in harvest would be difficult to keep clean. They found that there was always a gap in the liner. In addition to this, they realised that ball valves are also very expensive. They had only replaced the ball valve once after it started leaking and could not be put back together once it was dismantled. The winemaker told us at AKO UK that the stainless ball valve was horrifically expensive when he last checked. This cost was over-kill for their presses when the valve is only to be shut for a shorter period. This left the wine manufacturer no choice but to look at alternative valve options.
Once the Pinch Valves from AKO were installed, there was an instant comparison – the wine manufacturer finds the AKO Pinch Valve to be a much more hygienic solution, being a self cleaning unit and because of the fact that you will not find any problems with clogging since the Pinch Valve has a full and true bore.
The wine manufacturer finds that AKO Pinch Valves are a lot more cost effective, saving the company £6-7K in total, since the ball valves were replaced. The Pinch Valves are much more hygienic for their situation as there are no bug traps as with the ball valves. Pinch Valves are much less effort and faster to use with the simplicity of opening an air valve and the Pinch Valve is shut immediately.
In addition, the AKO Pinch Valve has saved the company approximately 3 minutes in maintenance time per cycle. With the valve performing around 100 cycles per year, this equates to 300 minutes, totaling 5 hours of maintenance time saved per year.
The winemaker told us: