The scorching sun shines outside the factory in the western mountainous area of Yemen. Engineer Ali is squatting beside the production line, carefully debugging the last set of sensors. As the green light on the control panel turns on, he takes a long breath, turns around and smiles to Mohammed, the head of the customer team: "This glass bottle filling machine can finally 'drink' the honey from your mountainous area."
As one of the largest honey exporters in Yemen, Mohammed's company has long faced problems such as low packaging efficiency and high breakage rate. Traditional equipment cannot adapt to the local conical glass bottles, and the high temperature environment often causes fluctuations in filling accuracy. After a field investigation, the PLY-PACK technical team decided to develop a glass bottle filling machine dominated by a flexible production line, which is compatible with different bottle types through modular design and equipped with a temperature and humidity adaptive system.
"The most difficult thing is to balance accuracy and speed." Zhang Gong, head of R&D at PLY-PACK, recalled. The project team upgraded the material of the filling valve to food-grade ceramic to avoid sticky honey liquid residue; at the same time, visual positioning technology was introduced to enable the robotic arm to capture the position of the bottle mouth within 0.3 seconds. These innovations enabled the equipment to achieve a 99.2% filling qualification rate during the trial operation phase, far exceeding customer expectations.
In order to deliver before the rainy season in Yemen, PLY-PACK linked 6 core suppliers to launch a "48-hour response mechanism". A precision parts factory in Jiangsu even temporarily adjusted the schedule for the project to ensure that the corrosion-resistant coating treatment of the transmission module was completed on schedule. "This glass bottle filling machine is like our 'mixed-blood child'," Mohammed joked. "The parts come from three continents, but it makes the sweetest honey in Yemen."
With the surge in demand for high-end food packaging in the Middle East, PLY-PACK is using intelligent filling technology as a breakthrough. The equipment not only supports remote operation and maintenance, but also reduces electricity consumption by 15% through the energy management system - which is crucial for factories in Yemen where electricity is in short supply. Mohammed revealed that after the new production line was put into use, the company's monthly production capacity increased to 450,000 bottles, and the first batch of orders has been sent to Europe through the Red Sea port.
As dusk fell, the lights in the factory were bright. The glass bottle filling machine on the assembly line was running at a constant speed, and the golden amber honey drew a fine arc on the bottle mouth. Ali tapped the screen to bring up the data panel, and suddenly turned to the visitor and said, "You know what? These bottles contain not only honey, but also the formula that we and our customers have iterated 27 times." In the distance, Mohammed held up a bottle of honey that had just come off the production line. The translucent glass bottle reflected the smile lines at the corners of his eyes: "From today on, the 'Made in Yemen' on the shelves of European supermarkets will have a more technological flavor."
