The modernization of VIP’s processing plants continues. The latest project is the realization of a new packaging hall at the Mivor cooperative in Laces, one of the largest cooperatives of the Val Venosta Cooperatives Association.
The cooperative with 340 members and an annual apple production of about 80,000 tons now has a completely renovated and highly modern processing hall on an area of 9,200 m². This is an important investment with 16 new ergonomic lines, a new filter system, a new management software and the connection of the High-Bay storage to the processing hall thanks to laser guided, automatic transpallets. But this is not all. The new structure is connected to two completely automated warehouses: a warehouse for packaged apples and an empty pallet warehouse.
Martin Metz, Mivor’s director, explains: “The planning started in 2015 with the quality of the processing of apples being the top priority in every phase. Thanks to a very high innovation level great importance was placed on the system’s efficiency in consideration of the environment. Mivor can thus save water and energy on the one hand and increase its employees’ welfare on the other hand. It is not by chance that the new plant allows a 25% reduction of the machines’ noise compared to the old packaging hall, whereas the risk of occupational diseases could be reduced by 10% thanks to the new ergonomic lines.”
“Technological development is fundamental for VIP. Our investments aim at reducing costs or increasing product efficiency, of course, but for us, technological development means processing our apples in the best possible conditions above all. We would like to have the possibility to trace the complete cycle of every single apple from the delivery to the cooperative to the dispatch to the clients by tracing every single phase, guaranteeing the ‘first in first out’ principle and ensuring the best possible conditions,” says Fabio Zanesco, sales and marketing manager VIP.
Zanesco concludes: “Besides efficiency and high-quality processing we have other objectives as well. One of them is flexibility: As a First Class Apple Partner we have to quickly satisfy our clients’ wishes with more and more varied orders at short notice these days.”
For more information:
www.vip.coop