Newbie Commercial Still Set Up

[Dr_Blackbear]

Long time reader, First time poster. We started a small brewery out here in Hawaii. Turns out the liquor production add on is pretty easy to do in our county. My business partner wants to move forward with purchasing a still to produce a local vodka/whiskey. I am coming straight from the home brew community and diving into commercial brewing and distilling for the first time.The beer and seltzer im not having much trouble scaling up for production. Lots of info on that. Im getting a bit stuck with the exact still we need to produce vodka/whiskey on a larger scale.I have years of experience running a 15gal reflux still as a home set up , but it seems I need to dive into the world of large plated columns. It looks like were going for a 500Liter still from overseas(Our other equipment is coming from same distributor). My main concern is vodka production. We will most likely dual use our vodka production. Vodka to sell, and 190 neutral spirit to turn into seltzer(high noon clones). Im thinking an 18 plate still broken into 4 12-inch columns. As I see it, I can use the first 1-2 columns for whiskey and then all 4 for vodka. Is this a reasonable approach? I know there are many other details to consider. Just trying to build a game plan. The company were going through basically offers complete kits. They just want to know ,columns size width,plate count and material(copper etc). Attached is a similar design were thinking of. Thanks in advance guys