MIXING, WEIGHING & CONVEYING CONVEYORS HELP KEEP THE WINE MOVING
A fully automated case feed and palletising system from CKF has increased productivity at Laithwaites Wine to an incredible 98%
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KF has recently designed, installed and commissioned an extensive new case feed and palletising system for
Laithwaites wine, an established ecommerce and retail business based in Gloucester. The system has enabled Laithwaites to handle a 50% increase in demand during 2020 and improve productivity from 65% to 98%! For over 50 years, Tony Laithwaite and the team at Laithwaites wines have been
providing customers with access to the very best quality wine from around the world. An increase in customer demand for online purchasing meant the ageing plant at their Gloucester facility, which had served them well, was no longer fully supporting their needs. Towards the end of 2019 CKF were approached by the Laithwaites’ team to develop and deliver a new automated palletising solution to meet their current and
AND KEEPING THE SOFT DRINKS FLOWING TOO!
Robotics and automation specialists, RMGroup, has installed three of its end-of-line robotic palletisers for soft drinks business, Radnor Hills. The move has enabled the manufacturer to benefit from process efficiencies throughout their production. Manufacturing a wide range of spring waters,
flavoured waters, functional waters, school compliant drinks, premium sparkling pressés, fruit juices and own label brands, Radnor Hills first approached RMGroup in 2018 to investigate automating an end-of-line palletising operation with a robot arm. On the line, packs of bottles needed to be palletised at a rate of 14 packs per minute. Given the
throughput and pallet stack formats, RMGroup needed to ensure that the robotic solution could multi pick packs up to four at any one time, and then place them onto a pallet in ones, twos, threes or fours, to keep up with the production line throughput. By using ABB robot studio, RMGroup’s mechanical design and technical department recommended the
use of a bespoke gripper, thereby enabling the robot to stack the packs onto pallets at the desired rate. Robot studio also helped RMGroup to decide which ABB robot would be best suited for the project, thereby optimising the ROI. Following the success of the initial installation, RMGroup has since supplied another two ABB end-of
line palletising systems at the site. The second was installed on Radnor’s Tetra Pak line, the requirement being to palletise cardboard cartons from dual production lines at a rate of 6 cases per minute; and the third line was installed on Radnor’s canning line, involving a much higher output of 24 packs, 12 of which needed to be palletised on euro pallets, at 20 cases per minute. RMGroup
rmrobotics.co.uk/products/ 28 MAY 2021 | PROCESS & CONTROL
https://vimeo.com/536724534
projected future requirements. The engineering team at CKF gained a
comprehensive understanding of Laithwaites’ operations through detailed analysis of the available product data and key review meetings with Laithwaites’ ops team. CKF proposed a new fully automated layer palletising system with a multi-lane accumulation feed system mounted on a new mezzanine floor. Laithwaites’ wine distribution from the
Gloucester facility is defined by online and retail sales, delivery routes, carriers, regions and time to consumer. This requires the filled cases of wine to be automatically sorted and placed onto the correct pallet to be shipped through the correct carrier. The facility is a high-bay warehouse with a
large demand on floor area. The new CKF installed system maximises the use of the ground floor by moving the accumulation and handling of cases to a new high-level mezzanine. The new fully automated solution uses multiple lanes of low friction conveyors which accumulate full pallet loads of cases (weighing up to 25kg per case) prior to releasing them to two layer palletisers. The CKF fully automated system was
installed and commissioned in two phases through 2020, working closely with the Laithwaites’ team to eliminate any operational disruption. Providing an increase in productivity to 98%, the benefits of the new system configuration have also enabled Laithwaites Wine to handle a substantial increase in throughput, reduce excessive manual handling and relocate the remaining manual processes into the area below the mezzanine floor (and away from busy trucking routes), increasing safety for employees.
CKF Systems
www.ckf.co.uk
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