Water Bottling Equipment | Liquid Filling Machines

Water Bottling Equipment is suited for bottle filling of water, mineral water, flavored drinks, and other non-carbonated beverages that can use the same type of liquid filling machine. Busch Machinery can offer a full bottling line including blow molders, bulk bottle unscramblers, rinsers, liquid fillers, cappers, bottle labelers (full body shrink sleeves and pressure sensitive bottle labeling), case or tray packing, carton sealers, sleeve wrappers, palletizers, and pallet wrappers.

A water bottling line can be as simple as as semi-automatic liquid filler and bottle labeler for production of about 1,000 bottles/hour to as many as 30,000 bottles/hour on a full blown bottling line, with many steps in between. Whatever your needs Busch Machinery can supply the right liquid filling machine and bottle labeling equipment to get the job done.

A Word of Caution for those Unfamiliar with Regulations for Water Bottling - It is a Food Item!

Bottled water and drinks are considered to be food items and therefore fall under the purview of the FDA, EPA, State and Local Regulations. It is your resposiblity to fully understand all of those regulations before you get started with a water bottling operation. If you plan to sell your water out of state, you must also comply with all of the regulations of the state or states you will be shipping to (they do vary). The regulations pertain to your water source, treatment systems, packaging operations, and sanitization of your equipment, bottles and caps.

A couple of article links to get you started:

Article on the FDA site

Click here to download IBWA's Code of Practice (PDF).

Entry Level Bottle Filling and Bottle Labeler - Up to 1,,000 Bottles/Hour

A siphon filler is the simplest liquid filling machine design that exists beyond opening a spigot. No pumps, motors or air is required, just gravity flow from you supply tank to the resevoir on the machine that controls the tank level with a float valve. Simply start the siphon and adjust bottle height so the level in the tank is even with the fill level you want your bottle filling to be at, and start producing. Most of these small operations can operate with one or two people with one person doing the bottle filling and hand capping, while the other does the bottle labeling and case packing. We carry several versions of bottle labelers depending on production needs, layout and budget. A basic Entry level consisting of liquid filler and bottle labeler costs under $10,000. Adding a hand held cap tightener and carton sealer that tapes the top and bottom of the carton can add even more efficiency to your water bottling operation.

Automatic Water Bottling Equipment up to 4,200 Bottles/Hour

The next step up in a bottle filler is an inline pressure filler which can be set up with up to 14 heads on smaller bottles and up to 8 heads for gallons. This type of liquid filler has a tank on the back with a float valve or pump switch that keeps an adequate supply of product in the tank. The tank has a pump located underneath it that is flood fed and pumps the water directly into the bottle. When the bottle is filled excess water flows back into the tank, the pump is shut off, pressure in the bottles is relieved, the heads rise, and the next set of bottles indexes in while the filled bottles index out.  The conveyor then shuts off, heads lower and the pump starts again. These bottle fillers are just one aspect of a water bottling line as there are other pieces to be fitted into the system both before and after the liquid filling machine.

Water Bottling Line Options Prior to Filling

Prior to bottle fillers are a number of options that can be plugged into the bottling line including blow molders, bulk bottle unscramblers, rotary feed tables and bottle rinsers.

Blow Molders

Many water bottling operations prefer to run their own blow molders as these machines can accept what are known as preforms which are basically a fully formed neck with threads but with the bottle portion not yet formed. Most blow molders can be configured to feed directly onto the line although many operations will have the bottle feed into a Bulk Bottle Unscrambler. The big advantage of blowing your own bottles is that shipping and storage costs can be greatly reduced compared with purchasing fully blown bottles.

Bulk Bottle Unscramblers

Bulk bottle unscramblers allow you to just simply dump a large quantity of bottles into a hopper and the machine can then sort the bottles out, and then stand them up to feed onto your conveyor, ready for the rinsing, filling, capping and labeling operations.

Bottle Rinsers

Two types of bottle rinser are available, air blow and vacuum or an actual chemical and water rinsing system.  Either way, it is highly recommended to make sure no debris is left in a container that could contaminate your product.

Post Liquid Filler Operations

We have to this point got the operations required through the liquid filling machine and can concentrate on the remaining bottling line operations of capping, bottle labeling and final packaging.

Automatic Cappers

After the liquid filler we now need to seal the bottle with an automatic screw capper. Typically water bottle use a lock down 28 mm cap, although other sizes are occasionally used. An automatic capper has a sorting system to feed caps single file in the proper orientation and in this case (as shown by picture to the right), belts to drive the bottles through and keep them from rotating, and a series of tightening wheels located on both sides of the cap that spins the cap down to the proper torque.

Bottle Labelers

There are two types of bottle labelers that are commonly used on water bottling lines.  The picture on the right is a pressure sensitive bottle labeler for round bottles.

The bottle labeler below is a full body sleeve applicator that is shrunk onto the bottle after application with a shrink tunnel. The big advantage of pressure sensitive bottle labelers is the better graphics printing, while the advantage of full body sleeve applicators is cost and the ease of conforming to the bottle shape.

  Final Packaging - Carton Sealer or Shrink Sleever?

We now have completed the bottle filling and bottle labeling operations.  The final piece of the puzzle is whether the bottles are going into cartons for sealing (right) or shrink sleeved as seen on the left. Most water bottling lines use a shrink sleever, but the choice is entirely up to you!