Commercial Supplies suggestions?

[BewitchedFox]

I'm struggling to find things that are commercially approved to carbonate, bottle fill, and cap that are decent enough sized and priced for a small business brewery.
The things i'm finding are either much larger scale than what the business currently is, or way too high of a price for the current size of the business.

Originally, I thought of a kegerator, pressure bottle filler, and manual capper; however that wasn't approved for commercial use.
So does anyone have any suggestions for what we can use? Price range wise is under 3k for each machine preferably. We'll be starting off by using a shared kitchen, so unfortunately we're very limited in the size of what we can use.

 

[AlexKay]

Originally, I thought of a kegerator, pressure bottle filler, and manual capper; however that wasn't approved for commercial use.

Can you provide a little more detail about how you intend to do this? The legal situation for growlers and bottles are totally different. (I'm 95% sure a draft system and a bottle filler are a-ok for growlers, for instance.)

 

[BewitchedFox]

Can you provide a little more detail about how you intend to do this? The legal situation for growlers and bottles are totally different. (I'm 95% sure a draft system and a bottle filler are a-ok for growlers, for instance.)

It was not for growlers! I'm guessing draft system? We were originally planning on using long neck bottles, carbonate in a kegerator and use a pressure bottle filler to fill the bottles, and manually cap them.
We were told it needed to all be commercial grade, and manual processes were not allowed. So i'm at a stand still on what sort of direction we need to go!

 

[AlexKay]

What batch size are you thinking about? Have you looked into mobile packaging services? Given the way cans are taking over craft, it might be hard to find a bottling service, but either way, they'll drive a truck up, plug into your tanks, package, and leave. It can be expensive, but you don't need capital and space for your own equipment, and you don't need to train people to operate, maintain, and clean that equipment.

 

[MaxStout]

Contracting that out to an independent bottler or canner might be the best option, as they would have the processes to do it within compliance.

Just to be clear here, we're talking about soft drinks only, right? This is the coffee/soda section, but you said "small business brewery," so I want to make sure. Commercial packaging of alcoholic beverages is a whole other kettle of fish.

If we're talking soft drinks, the FDA has authority over those. When you were "told it needed to be commercial grade," was it FDA who stated that, or perhaps a state agency?

It might be prudent to obtain the agency's specific rules as they apply to packaging your products. There may be labeling requirements, as well.

 

[Wayne1]

Medusa Bottle Filler. XpressFill Pneumatic capper.
The Medusa it a good price for a manually operated multi-head, counter pressure filler. The XpressFill line turns is up a bit. The Ferrari pneumatic capper does require an air compressor, but it it fast and fairly simple to operate. I used variations of these units to fill 22 ox bottle of beer for special releases at the last brewery I worked at.