Page 41 - Packaging News Magazine July-August 2018

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July-August 2018 www.packagingnews.com.au CASE STUDY MATERIALS HANDLING
“The line required an upgrade not only to meet volume, but to meet more stringent quality requirements and remove current manual handling issues.
“After our design review, it was decided to replace the packing side and install a new grading system.”
The resulting $6 million system, and its overall design, is revolutionary for the fruit industry, according to Gilbert.
The new Spectrim grading system, which was supplied by New Zealand company Compac, is designed to take up to 300 im- ages per piece of fruit, these images are then melded into a 3D image to allow accu- rate sorting into one of 24 grades.
The packing side is now based on flexible accumulation systems using new packing technology to enable some of the fastest packing lines in the country. This equip- ment was supplied by an Italian equipment from Sorma via its Australian agent J-Tech, and operates at a much higher speed than MFC’s previous packing machinery.
These systems are combined with cen- tralised palletising systems and automated strapping to remove manual handling is- sues and increase safety of the site and op- erations, according to Gilbert.
“The mandarins must be sorted into one of many combinations of grade and size, and with the old system, these were packed all at once, so we came up with a new method,” Gilbert says. “We used bins as buffers, and each of the new packing mod- ules were purely dedicated to packing one SKU at a time.”
Based on the images taken by the new Compac system, fruit is automatically sorted according to its grade, size and weight, significantly boosting the efficien- cy of the line.
KNOCK-ON BENEFITS
The increased automation also reduces manual handling of heavy boxes. Previous- ly, MFC staff were manually packing and palletising the boxes one SKU at a time.
Now, a bin tipper and a forklift are used to move the fruit from the bins and into a high speed linear weighing filler.
Once the fruit enters the boxes, they are glued, weighed and sent through to one of three automated palletising lines, and then a trolley car takes the pallets off to an auto- matic strapping machine.
In addition to removing manual handling issues, the centralised palletising systems and automated strapping will increase the
safety credentials of MFC’s operations.
The new set up has also been designed to help MFC improve its cost base and deliv-
ery reliability, according to Gilbert. Staffing issues have also been eased, he says. Previously, because of the seasonality of its operations, MFC had to rely on sea- sonal workers and backpackers. Now it needs only a stable core team, so no redun-
dancies have been necessary.
A FRESH TAKE
“Thisprojecthasbeenreallyinterestingfor Process Partners as it was outside of our nor- mal customer base,” Gilbert says. “This is the first time we’ve worked on fruit grading. Our work usually centres on process and packaging applications within the dairy, beverage and food sectors for a range of cli- ents, including companies like Lion, Murray Goulburn/Saputo and Mondelez.
It was great to be able to take our knowledge from food packaging and apply it to fruit processing.”
ABOVE: Moving from a six-lane grader to an eight-lane grader has boosted capacity, but it was decoupling the line into grading and packing that made the difference, according to Mildura Fruit Company.
“It was great to be able to take our knowl- edge from food packaging and apply it to fruit processing,” Gilbert says.
“Our strategy was to ensure MFC’s proj- ectworkedfromacost,timelineandtech- nology solution point of view. We looked at the risks, mitigation strategies and we as- sisted with their overall plan into the next five to ten years, and communicated that upwards to gain board-level support.”
MFC’s Hill says, “We went from an inte- grated graded and packing line, that was packed as it was graded off the line, to a de- coupled system, with the grading system different to the packaging set up.”
“The new system is now in use, and while it’s early days, and the system is still being bedded down, the potential advan- tages are clear.
“Moving from a six lane grader to an eight lane grader boosted capacity, but it was decoupling the line into grading and packing that made the difference, increas- ing our mandarin processing capacity by 50 to 60 per cent.” ■