CONTROL & AUTOMATION
PACKING LINES
BRILLOPAK
MORRISONS CHOOSES BRILLOPAK TO AUTOMATE
MULTIPLE FRESH PRODUCE PACKING LINES
In the last 18-months, Brillopak has installed
a range of fully automated pick and place
packing lines at three of Morrisons fresh
produce and fruit manufacturing sites.
Aligned to Morrisons’ strategy to provide the
retailer’s 11 million weekly shoppers with the
best quality fresh produce, Jason Kelly, Head
of Operations for Morrisons Manufacturing
has led the automation strategy across their
fresh produce business, which includes the
recent Brillopak systems installed at Rushden,
Thrapston and Gadbrook.
All three sites are delivering improved in-store
presentation for apples, potatoes and other
root vegetables. What’s more, the turnkey
systems can be easily adapted to handle
reusable and renewable packaging formats
reports Rushden’s site manager Andy Day.
Commenting on how automating fresh
produce lines can lead to a higher quality
product and efficiency improvements, Jason
says: “The characteristics fresh produce means
that gentle handling is essential to prevent
damage and costly waste. Equally important
is the need to retain product freshness.”
Jason continues: “Rushden was the third
multi-line implementation where Morrisons
worked with Brillopak. Rather than creating
individual autonomous operating units,
we sought an integrated, comprehensive,
more labour efficient system that covered
everything from packing produce to
palletising. Brillopak’s modular automated
concepts have proven to be extremely flexible
and reliable, accommodating variations
in speeds and packaging formats. The
true measure though has been the almost
immediate improvements to operational
efficiency effectiveness (OEE).
Historically, the Rushden packhouse,
which cleans, stores, packs and distributes
thousands of tonnes of potatoes every year,
loaded bags of flow wrapped potatoes
manually into crates. Now, thanks to two
fully-automated and two semi-automated
pick, pack and palletising lines, the
Northamptonshire site has enhanced its
potato packing precision and transformed its
operation from an unergonomic roundtable
manual crate separation and case loading
method, to a safer, high speed, optimised
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potato packing process. Similar turnkey lines
were installed at Gadbrook.
Forming part of a company-wide investment
in front and back end manufacturing
improvements, Rushden has significantly
boosted its OEE within 12 months, reports
Andy. Yet, most importantly for the site
manager, the way potatoes are presented
in crates has dramatically improved.
Additionally, waste is down, bottlenecks
have been virtually eliminated, reliance on
agency staff has reduced and workforce
wellbeing and satisfaction is the best it has
ever been.
Andy explains: “Designing a system that
would accommodate our facilities tight
footprint was the biggest challenge. Yet,
having worked with Brillopak on Thrapston’s
apple packing line, I felt confident that
they could prove their concept and invent
a modular automated system that we
could introduce in phases causing minimal
disruption to our seven-day-a-week
processing and warehouse operation.”
Because of the efficiency of the already
automated back end section of the
warehouse, the Brillopak packing systems
needed to boost the pick and place line
speed. Rather than commission a ready-
made robotic system, the Rushden team
worked collaboratively with Brillopak to
engineer a new pick and pack concept. Comprising two long stretches of conveyor
feeding bagged potatoes from the
manufacturing and bagging operations,
each automated line features eight
Brillopak elements. At the start of the
line a crate destacker unit lifts and feeds
Morrisons’ retail trays at a consistent speed
and continuous stream on conveyors to
the dexterous P180 spider arm robotic
cell. Snaking alongside are the product
conveyors. Rumble technology is fitted to
a small section on each conveyor to help
settle the packs as the feed single file into
each P180 Spider Arm Unipick Dual Robot
Cell.
Unlike other depots that wash, grade, pack,
palletise and send out in the same day,
Rushden has a separate wash, store, pack
and case loading area. Because there’s more
fresh produce being processed and stored,
space at Rushden is at a premium. Rather than using gripper end effectors
that would pierce the potato bags, Brillopak
designed a glove-like end effector that
wraps around each potato pack robot arm
lowering rapidly yet gently into trays at very
high speeds.
A FITTING PARTNERSHIP