Eliminating heavy lifting of kegs at Dugges Brewery

23 September 2022 | TAWI Danmark A/S

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New micro breweries are entering the market every year, offering customers a wide selection of local craft made beer. Dugges Brewery is located in Landvetter Gothenburg, on the west coast of Sweden. In 2005, founder Mikael Dugge Engström opened the doors to Dugges brewery for the first time. A growth journey began. Today, Dugges has 12 employees, significant export business and new beer flavours launched almost every week.

The challenge of keg filling & palletizing
With the steady growth came some manual handling challenges. On some days, hundreds of kegs were filled, lifted from above shoulder height, turned 90 degrees and then placed on pallets. Every keg weighing 30+ kg. This is heavy work even for the most fit employee. Especially in the long run.

When it comes to keg filling, we sometimes have 200 kegs that needs to be filled and placed on pallets in one day. Doing this manually is not good for the body. Therefore, we started looking for a solution”
says Mikael Dugge Engström, Founder & CEO of Dugges Brewery.

How can we improve our work environment?
A few years back, Dugges decided to invest in an ergonomic vacuum lifter to relieve the employees from the heavy manual handling. The priority was to provide better ergonomic conditions and avoid unnecessary strain for the brewery workers.
The solution was a TAWI vacuum lifter with a wheel, specially engineered for exactly this purpose, making it easy for employees to lift the heavy kegs, turn them 90 degrees and place them on pallets.

“The lifter works well. It facilitates for us and removes heavy lifting, sparing our bodies”,
Sebastian Lind, Brewer at Dugges Brewery.