Project: Cockerill - United Kingdom

To meet market demand, Cockerill needed to expand its dolly and crate loading capacity

As a leading supplier and packer of potatoes, Cockerill remains at the forefront of the market. This results in increasing demand from customers in the retail, processing and food service industries. To continue to meet this demand, Cockerill wanted to automate its packaging process.

The challenge was to automate production step by step, starting with loading dollies and crates, taking into account a possible expansion with crate erectors, crate stackers and palletisers.

In the new set-up, using three Lan Handling dolly & crate loaders, the total handling capacity increases to a total of 240 bags per minute.

Various product types

These dolly & crate loaders are used for loading potatoes in plastic and raschel bags of up to 5kg, in boxes, crates and dollies. Thanks to the automatic gripper change, setting up for a new product type is fast and effortless, which ensures a continuous production flow. Also, a future switch from bale arm crates to Europool crates is already covered, as the Lan dolly and crate loader is suitable for both.

Ready for the future

Thanks to the successful implementation of these production automation solutions, Cockerill is currently exploring the possibilities for further automation of their packaging lines. As Lan Handling provides a full range of end-of-line automation solutions, such as case packers, palletizers, crate erectors and (de)stackers, this partnership is ready for the next phase.