Page 34 - Packaging News Magazine May-June 2018
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END-TO-END SOLUTIONS
Brushing up on automation
www.packagingnews.com.au
May-June 2018
A $165m greenfield development for DuluxGroup created a blank canvas for the installation of an end-to-end automated plant, now rated as one of the top five Industry 4.0 factories in the world. Automation engineering specialist Foodmach shared details of the project with PKN.
STEPPING UP
DuluxGroup required end-to-end automation: the latest in world-class paint making technology.
The Group wanted to produce more advanced paint products using evolving technology in resins with even greater levels of quality and consistency. The company required a solution that would allow it to step into the next generation of paint technol- ogy and innovation.
However, paint manufacture is traditionally labour-intensive; there were up 40,000 touches of raw mate- rials at the old site at Rocklea. In ad- dition, paint is made in batches, not through continuous production, so there are 300-400 recipes to be ac- commodated involving 200+ raw materials and up to 1400 SKUs (stock keeping units). Product is packaged in varying sized steel and plastic containers ranging from 1L to 15L in capacity.
FUTURE FACTORY
The new factory has five fully-au- tomated filling and production lines: three high-velocity and a two smaller lines in the blend- and-tint plant. It has a total capac- ity of 50 million – 80 million litres (spring capacity) per year.
The plant is operated by 60 em- ployees on two shifts over five days. These are newly-appointed staff with no specialisation or manufac- turing expertise.
Foodmach supplied all the depal- letising, conveying systems, robotic orientation, AGV, laser coding and labelling systems, integrating its own equipment with that from in- ternational OEMs. Foodmach also provided an over-arching line con- trol system to handle all the chal- lenges of batch paint production, now and into the future.
Kevin Worrell, project director at Dulux Group said: “This is consid- ered one of the top five Industry 4.0 plants in the world currently, and I have that on authority from the Ger- man government... we couldn’t achieve what we needed to achieve if we didn’t go down that [Industry 4.0] path.”
HE Dulux name is synonymous
with quality and innovation. Its heritage in Australia dates back to 1918 and it has long been the na- tion’s leading paint brand. Dulux is consistently voted one of the most trusted brands in Australia overall
– across any product category. After the Brisbane floods in 2011, DuluxGroup decided to relocate the majority of its water-based paint manufacturing from its existing fac- tory at Rocklea in Brisbane to a green-
field site in Mickleham, Victoria.
Located in Merrifield Business Park in Melbourne’s north, the new $165-million manufacturing facility is 30 kilometres from the CBD and strategically located on the Hume Highway with good connectivity to the Eastern Seaboard. At 22,600m2 in size – about the size of the Mel- bourne Cricket Ground playing area – it is the largest coatings factory in Australia and New Zealand.
The plan is that the facility will support the Dulux paint business for decades to come.


































































































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