Customer FlevoTrade
Location Dronten
Year 2023
Flevotrade already knew for some years that an investment in their existing weighing and packing lines was needed. The existing machines were outdated and needed renewal to serve Flevotrade’s demands. After a thorough market research, Manter was selected to be the preferred company to supply weighing and packaging machines. The consistent high capacity of the Manter MD14XL in combination with AutoPack HS were the main reason for Flevotrade to select Manter as their supplier, in combination with a proven high reliable performance.
FlevoTrade is one of the 5 largest onion exporters of the Netherlands with a grading and packaging facility of 27.000m2. At ‘FlevoTrade Onions Grading and Packaging’ they sell approximately 120,000 tons of Dutch onions annually to buyers worldwide. FlevoTrade sells most of their onions in large mesh bags to Africa and these are delivered by boat. Onion business to Africa is quite specific, due to export windows and availability of ships. When an order is sold, Flevotrade needs to quickly pack a big volume of onions, as the ship needs to be filled as quickly as possible. Because of this, it is important that FlevoTrade can produce consistently day and night at a high capacity.
The solution we offered
In order to meet the demands we offered two new Manter weighers (MD14 XL) with two AutoPack HS bag sewing machines. The MD14 XL has an impressive capacity of 24 drops per minute for 25kg bags. And the AutoPack HS can go up to 20 bags per minute with 25 kg bags. As you can tell there is a small capacity gap, which we filled up using a double discharge on the MD14 XL and adding an existing sewing machine on the other side. We received approval in February 2023 and in July the upgraded packaging line was already fully operational. An impressive job by our team and made possible by good communication with the customer.
“We always do a lot of research when it comes to investing in new machinery. Looking at the last few months of production I can tell you, we are very satisfied with the choice we made. This applies to the Manter’s as well as the Solidtec palletizers, purchased several years ago.”
Weighing and Packaging
After topping and grading the onions are weighed using 4 weighers total. The 6 bag sewing machines underneath pack the onions in mesh bags ranging from 5 to 25 kilograms. “The speed at which we can operate depends heavily on the quality of the onions,” Lemco informs us. “The higher the quality, the closer we get to the maximum capacity of the Manter machines.” Thus, a packaging speed of 20 bags per minute can be achieved with 25 kg bags, assuming only the MD14 XL with an AutoPack HS are utilized.
Palletizing and Transport
The bags are transported from the packaging machines to the 4 Solidtec ST30 palletizers via a set of conveyor belts. With a maximum capacity of 22 bags per minute, this machine seamlessly integrates with the weighing and packaging machines. “The packaging process runs throughout the day at a pace of 60 to 75 pallets per hour, which is nearly 3 containers per hour,” Lemco states. The pallets are fully automatically stacked, wrapped, and placed on the pick-up platform for the forklift. Subsequently, the forklift neatly places all pallets in multiple warehouses, where they can be picked up for transportation to a ship in Rotterdam.
Self-Driving Forklifts
As Flevotrade is always looking for innovations to further develop and improve their operation, they are also looking for further automation of pallet transport. Therefore, FlevoTrade is in the process of implementing a system of self-driving forklifts for pallet transportation. Successful test runs have already been conducted, although it is not always feasible to operate entirely without manned forklifts. This is, of course, only a matter of time.
Tom de Boer
t.deboer@manter.com
+31 6 3920 7272
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