Hardy Beverages is a producer of beverages and is located in Memphis, TN. Hardy Beverages has approximately 50 employees in this location. A premier bottler of hydrogen-infused waters, Hardy develops “better for you” beverages for informed consumers to address a growing need for products free of counterproductive sugars, caffeine or other stimulates. Their innovative state of the art proprietary hydrogen infusion beverage process enhances product with molecular hydrogen. The company is focused on the business of distributing and marketing the retail sale of its family of premium packaged hydrogen water beverage products. It is a woman-owned, minority-owned business.

Hardy Beverages was implementing new automation equipment in their production lines and requested partnership and resource assistance for systems integration and troubleshooting. The company need to capture clean-in-place process (CIP) cleaning water at the filler machine nozzle for recirculation. Owner and President Carolyn Hardy turned to Tennessee MEP (TMEP), part of the MEP National Network™, for help.

TMEP connected Hardy Beverages with the center's systems integration partner resource, Blue Collar Automation (BC), who worked directly with Hardy Beverages to provide programming and troubleshooting to accomplish integration of a new bowl feeder into an existing production line filler. Blue Collar Automation also provided final electrical prints for the integrated system.

A previous project to provide systems integration design and assistance to implement a process to capture CIP cleaning water at the filler machine nozzle for recirculation had also been delivered in the same year.  Before this project, cleaning water drained to the floor. A means was needed to collect the water and return it to the CIP tank for recirculation during the CIP cleaning process. This project leveraged the work from TMEP service provider Revilo Engineering and Consulting. 

These projects resulted in improvements and an increase in machine operation and functionality from utilizing this approach which delivered on the expected benefits from increased production rates and throughput times, improved quality through better part presentation, and reduction in labor costs. The CIP tank recirculation project provided for a more economical and environmentally friendly solution for the CIP process.