Will the old palletisers move with us to the new building or will we switch completely to new ones? Arian Vos of Vos Onions from Veen asked himself this question when the new building was completed last year. He eventually chose to move the two existing Symach machines and buy a third palletiser. That the old machines are still serving well was evident last week when the counter on one of the palletisers hit the 20 million bags processed mark. Johnny de Bat from Symach took advantage of the milestone to bring cake to the onion sorting and packing station in Brabant, as is tradition.
Vos Onions decided to take the operation in hand at the new building (3,500 m2 of floor space). "There used to be a stack of pallets in front of each palletiser, now they are fed by two pallet warehouses with a buffer for about 200 pallets. A shuttle supplies each palletiser with pallets, so we hardly have to worry about it," Arian says. "Furthermore, we also have one discharge line for the full pallets. A shuttle takes the full pallets to the wrapper. After this, we have plenty of room for buffering and a forklift driver can load two cars at ease before he has to take the pallets off. The full pallets are now about ten to twenty metres away from the dock."
Arian shows himself to be an enthusiastic user of the palletisers. "We bought the first two at the previous new building 15 years ago. With the new machine we bought last year, we also gained additional features. For instance, the lift is electric instead of hydraulic, the bag feeder is flat and the bin no longer has to tilt, and the new palletiser can also stack crates. Because we pack on the floor and then lower the onions, we no longer need elevator belts, only lowering belts. This benefits stacking and prevents wear and tear. In the past, bags of coarse onions could sometimes get stuck in the tray because they were lying backwards. We no longer have this problem."
A special wish of Vos Onions was to work with a wrapper with a double arm, but with one clip unit. "The moment the net runs out, the wrapper turns 180 degrees and automatically starts up the other roll. This allows the operator to choose a quiet moment to replace the roll themselves," Johnny de Bat explains. He speaks of a pleasant cooperation. "Arian knows very well what he wants and had figured out exactly how he wanted it beforehand. With some drawing and shuffling you arrive at the best solutions that way. I promised he could wrap 60 pallets per hour with three palletisers and we succeeded."
"We have also had machines reaching 25 million bags, so we know the machines can last a long time. Vos Onions handles most of the maintenance itself and takes good care of the machines. It's great that a packing station reaches these volumes, it shows that hefty volumes are being packed daily," Johnny compliments the onion packing station.
"The other palletiser is at over 19 million, so you can already signal the baker in Zaamslag," Arian responds, laughing. "The great thing is that the rush at our place is nicely spread throughout the year. Now we are packing a lot for big customers who export a lot of onions to Africa, after the turn of the year we again serve mainly customers exporting within Europe. So we can keep the palletisers working well all year round."
For more information:
Arian Vos
Vos Onions
Bagijnhof 66
4264 AZ Veen
Tel: +31 41 669 11 97
info@vosonions.nl
Johnny de Bat
Symach
Gerard Philipsweg 8
4538 DA Terneuzen
Tel: +31 115 685 625
johnny.debat@bwpackaging.com
www.symach.nl