No other beer in the world is linked
to its bottle like Corona Extra. Yet, when people think of Corona,
they don’t think of a bottle. They think of where they would
like to be – relaxing on a warm beach, gazing out at picturesque
azure seas. Years of effective marketing have convinced people that
Corona Extra is an expression of lifestyle, not just a bottle of beer.
People all over the world heartily agree, and choose to drink a Corona
because it brings to mind relaxation and escape. Think of Corona as
a vacation in a bottle.
The bottle itself is rather simple. It stands just nine and a half
inches tall and holds 12 fluid ounces of cerveza (that’s Spanish
for beer). However, Corona has several characteristics that make it
different from any other beer and add to its unique image. For one,
Corona Extra is not available fresh from a keg. It’s known for
being served in a clear glass bottle that has the label painted on.
In fact, the Old English style lettering of the Corona Extra label
is a registered trademark. Most other popular beers are bottled in
brown glass bottles and adorned with paper labels. Corona bottles
are sealed with an aluminum cap that can only be loosened with a bottle
opener; the bottles have a rough feel that makes you think each one
is unique.
Corona Extra is known as a beer imported from Mexico, but it has a
long history. The light-yellow beer was first brewed in 1925 by Cervecería
Modelo in Mexico City, and was first imported to the United States
in 1979 by way of California and Texas. The beer can now be found
nearly anywhere in the world.
Corona recently became the best-selling imported beer in the United
States, and is now the fifth-best selling beer in the world. Back
in its birthplace, Corona still holds the crown of most popular beer.
Grupo Modelo, one of the largest companies in Mexico, now produces
Corona. In addition to Corona, the company owns nine other brands
of beer including Corona Light, Modelo Especial, Modelo Light, Victoria,
Negra Modelo, Pacifico, Estrella, Leon and Montejo. The only bottle-making
factory for the gigantic Grupo Modelo is the Fabrica Nacional de Molduras
in Mexico City. The factory is automated to produce nearly four million
bottles per day. That’s 120 million bottles per month!
Inside the factory there are areas to produce and label the bottles
before they are shipped by train to one of seven Grupo Modelo breweries.
At one end of the enormous factory is the machine shop, which is responsible
for creating the molds for all the brands of beer.
The machine shop was once a simple operation for a small factory.
“We began with just eight people and one manual lathe in 1971,”
says machine shop manager Julian Fernandez Rodriguez. To keep up with
the worldwide demand for Grupo Modelo beers, the machine shop realized
they needed automation. “We now have 22 CNC machines, 39 manual
machines and 172 employees working in our three-thousand-square-meter
shop.”
Haas machine tools have been part of the growth of Grupo Modelo and
Corona Extra. In November 1996, Hi-Tec, the Haas distributor in Mexico,
installed the first Haas in the machine shop – an HS-1RP horizontal
machining center. That HMC was, in fact, the first Haas horizontal
installed in all of Mexico.
The machine shop now has a total of five Haas machining centers –
three VF-3s and two HS-1RPs. “We bought the Haas machines because
of price, performance and service,” says Rodriguez. “The
president of the factory was very satisfied with the first Haas machine
because the service was so good. So it was an easy decision to purchase
other Haas machines.”
The molds to create a Corona bottle are complex and
include 10 different parts. One set of molds creates the top and the
neck of the bottle, while a second set forms the bottom half. “The
top of the bottle and the mold that creates it are important for several
reasons,” explains Salvador Vazquez, assistant manager. “The
rim of the bottle is where your mouth goes, so it has to be very smooth.
Another reason is that the bottles require an opener – they’re
not twist-off – so the top has to be very strong.”
The different parts of the mold are made from cast iron and brass.
The cast iron comes from foundries in Indiana. Manual mills are used
for roughing the B96 cast iron, and then Haas machines are used for
the precision milling, drilling and tapping. It takes about seven
hours to create a complete mold for a Corona bottle, with finishing
and polishing taking the most time.
The Haas machining centers have helped the machine shop improve how
well the two halves of a mold fit together. The shop uses a Haas VF-3
VMC to cut the grooves in the mold. “The different parts of
the mold have to be machined to tight tolerances so that they fit
together perfectly. We’ve had better repeatability and accuracy
with the Haas machines,” says Rodriguez.
The popularity of the Grupo Modelo brands keeps the factory running
around the clock, and the machine shop knew it would need machines
it could count on. “The service from Hi-Tec has continued to
be outstanding,” notes Rodriguez. “We have to have the
machines up and running to keep up with the demand.
We can call Hi-Tec and they are here in 20 minutes. Haas provides
far and away the best service when compared to the other CNC manufacturers.”
A mold is generally used to create 80,000 bottles before it has to
be replaced because of heat and stress. The machine shop manufactures
more than 600 molds per month to keep up with the worldwide demand
for Corona. In addition to making molds for 12-ounce bottles, the
shop also creates molds for 10-ounce bottles and small 8-ounce bottles,
appropriately named Coronitas.
The machinists enjoy using the Haas machines because of the user-friendly
control. “It was very easy to train employees how to use the
Haas machines, because the control is so easy to use,” says
Rodriguez. “We also like how the control is the same on the
vertical and horizontal machining centers. Once you learn how to use
the control, then you can use either type of machining center.”
In addition to making molds for beer bottles, the machine shop creates
molds for bottles of Tequila Sauza. The tequila bottle features an
intricate label on the neck of the bottle. The Haas machining centers
have helped reduce the time it takes to create the label. “We
have seen an improvement in cycle times using the Haas machines, especially
on engraving,” says Rodriguez. The engraving of the cast iron
was once done by hand and took four days. It now takes only 40 minutes,
using a Haas VF-3 VMC with an HRT-210 rotary indexer.
The molds for the Corona bottles are used in an automated system that
quickly produces thousand of bottles. Sand and limestone are heated
in a furnace to 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit to create the glass. Then
the molten glass drops into
the bottom of the mold.
The two halves of the mold quickly come together and then separate,
to create the top and the neck of the bottle. A handle grabs the neck
and flips it over into a second mold. Air is blown through the top
of the bottle to create the middle and the base. The bottom of the
bottle is still red hot when it emerges from the mold. All of this
takes place in just two seconds. The finished bottle moves to another
unit, where flames burn off any excess material. The bottle then bounces
along on conveyer belts to cool down before being placed in a box.
The boxes are moved to another part of the factory, where the bottles
come out of the box to have the labels painted on. The bottles go
back into the box a second time, and then the boxes are wrapped up
on a flat. The flat is loaded by forklift into a freight car and shipped
by train to the brewery to be filled with the popular cerveza.
So when you are enjoying that bottle of Corona and dreaming of being
on vacation, you might remember that Corona’s unique bottle
got its start on a Haas machining center. And while the popularity
of Corona grows around the world, Haas will continue to help produce
molds for that special bottle of beer.
