Danish company Dan-Palletiser has installed a new packaging area for the palletising of 5kg and 10kg buckets of processed vegetables at Orkla Foods’ site in Eslöv, 20 miles north east of Malmö.
Two layer palletisers place buckets on pallets at speeds up to 17 buckets per minute per machine. The facility in Eslöv is Orkla Foods’ innovation centre and advanced manufacturing and industrial volumes are important parts of the company’s technology, yet palletising of the conical metal cans and buckets was a challenge for its production team.
It was difficult to automate the loading of the heavy buckets onto pallets with the necessary safety and capacity, and at the same time avoid the heavy lifts and wearing manual labour, the company recounted.
Dan-Palletiser developed its new MK4 palletiser to meet these challenges, placing the products gently on the pallet and supporting the buckets from beneath. The accuracy of stacking exactly 1mm when placing the buckets one row at a time, four rows per minute, in a required pallet pattern. The system handles four different sizes of plastic and metal buckets, with and without handles, with capacities of between 5l and 10l, from two production lines.
The MK4 palletiser was part of a larger installation that also included an empty- and full-pallet conveying system from Dan-Palletiser. Orkla Foods Sweden produces 200,000 tons of food products each year and generated a turnover of SEK 4.8bn ($580m) last year. The Eslöv site employs 580 people and produces a range of ready-made meals, as well as processed potatoes and other vegetables.
Orkla Foods Eslöv process technician Krister Nilsson said: “The system’s speed and flexibility, the weight of the load being palletised, and the accuracy of the stacking all add up to a quite impressive example of what layer palletising technology can bring to the end of the production line.”
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