Major Brewery Cuts Costs by 25% with Vulcan Seals’ Solution

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Overview

In collaboration with a key African distributor, Vulcan Seals supported one of the world’s largest breweries in achieving a 25% reduction in purchasing and logistics costs across its African operations. By optimizing the brewery’s Mechanical Seal supply chain, Vulcan Seals streamlined operations for over 500 pumps across eight brewery sites, ensuring efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and regulatory compliance.

The challenge

A major global brewery faced significant inefficiencies in its supply chain for Mechanical Seals across its African operations. The company managed numerous suppliers for each of its eight sites, leading to:

  • Complex purchasing processes
  • Higher logistics costs
  • Inconsistent quality and compliance across different locations

Additionally, the brewery’s operations spanned a variety of pump types, including those used for maintenance, food and beverage processing, and critical end-product transfer, each with unique seal requirements.

To solve these challenges, the brewery needed a partner capable of providing high-quality, consistent mechanical seals across multiple sites, while significantly simplifying and streamlining the supply chain.

Vulcan Seals’ solution

Vulcan Seals partnered with the brewery and its African distributor to conduct an extensive assessment of the equipment across all eight sites. The team identified over 500 pumps, including:

  • Maintenance pumps: Boiler feed, flushing, and cleaning systems
  • Food and beverage process pumps: APV® pumps for soda water media
  • Product transfer pumps: Alfa Laval® pumps for moving the brewery’s end product

With this detailed equipment information in hand, Vulcan Seals:

  • Cross-referenced OEM seals: Identified equivalent Vulcan Seals part codes for all pumps.
  • Provided FDA-compliant materials: Ensured seals met regulatory standards for food and beverage processing where required.
  • Streamlined procurement: Enabled centralized purchasing for all sites, allowing the brewery to place single bulk orders through a single distributor, instead of managing multiple suppliers.

This solution enabled the brewery to standardize seal supply across its African operations, improving efficiency and reducing costs.

The results

By centralizing the Mechanical Seal supply chain and transitioning to a single-source supplier (Vulcan Seals), the brewery achieved:

  • 25% Reduction in purchasing and logistics costs: The brewery cut costs by placing bulk orders through one distributor, eliminating the need for multiple suppliers and reducing logistics complexity.
  • Improved supply chain efficiency: The new streamlined process saved significant time and effort for the procurement teams, allowing them to focus on other strategic initiatives.
  • Reliable, high-quality seals: By utilizing Vulcan Seals products such as the Type 16 Plus for APV® pumps and the Type 92E for Alfa Laval® pumps, the brewery ensured its operations remained efficient and compliant with industry standards.

Product spotlight

  • Vulcan Seals Type 16 Plus: Used in APV® pumps for soda water media, these seals are engineered to meet the rigorous demands of beverage production processes.
  • Vulcan Seals Type 92E: Designed for Alfa Laval® pumps, these seals are crucial in the movement of the final beer product, ensuring operational reliability.

Conclusion

Through a strategic partnership with Vulcan Seals, the brewery not only cut costs but also optimized its operations across Africa. The collaborative effort to streamline the Mechanical Seal supply chain resulted in significant savings and enhanced operational efficiency, reinforcing the value of Vulcan Seals as a long-term partner in cost reduction and process improvement.

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