Great Northern Brewery, Dundalk / Ireland

The Great Northern Brewery is the second-largest brewery in Ireland with a typical infrastructure consisting of individual automation islands with different control systems that has grown over time.

The challenge in the specific project was not only to bring the exisiting heterogeneous automation structures for the complete cold block starting with the fermentation cellar and ending with the filtration, including the bright beer tank area and the truck loading stations, into a single congtrol system, but also to guarantee the shortest possible conversion times. To ensure this, in close cooperation with the brewery and Diageo Global Supply, a comprehensive functional design specification was prepared and comprehensive preparatory tests performed both in Herzogenaurach and on-site at the plant.

The software conversion of the fermentation control, with the successive execution of the programs in the fermentation cellar, yeast cellar, storage cellar and the CIPs and finishing with the issuance of unfiltered beer to the filtration, was completed in less than one week.

The commissioning of not only the filtration itself and the bright beer tank area, but also the conversion of the truck loading stations was concluded in April 2009.