KiMs A/S

Palletising of Chips and Snacks

KiMs is Denmark’s largest manufacturer of chips and snacks. DAN-Palletiser has helped to pave the way for palletising 25 pallets per hour at the state of art manufacturing facility at Søndersø.

KiMs has an annual turnover of more than 66 mill. €. KiMs A/S is part of Orkla Brands, which is part of Chips Group, Scandinavia’s leading crisps and snacks business.

It is not without reason that KiMs ranks first on the Danish market for chips and snacks. The company has built up a recognized and respected name due to strong products of high quality.

High quality is also important in the standard of services delivering the products to the customers. Many deliveries must be done with lightning speed, especially up to feasts and summer holidays. To keep up with growing demands KiMs decided to invest in a new fully automatic conveying and palletising system.

16 Accumulating Roller Conveyors
Formerly, the palletising was done by hand. The products arrived from five production lines via conveyors to 16 height adjustable palletising platforms. Here the operators stacked the boxes of the chips and snacks, onto the various pallets.

Based upon a previous and successful delivery from DAN-Palletiser to KiMs AS in Norway, The Søndersø factory had no doubt that this solution also would be perfect for the plant in Denmark. The final solution was based on a PLC controlled conveying system incl. accumulating roller conveyors and three fully automatic palletisers, type MK3 high loader, from DAN-Palletiser.

”In 3 weeks the complete system had to be installed. The commissioning took longer time that planned but since then, the installation has been running smoothly and already paid for itself. Furthermore the system is as good as operator free”, explains Birger Christensen.

The products arrive from five production lines, two lines with chips and three lines with snacks. DAN-Palletiser receives the boxes from existing roller conveyors, after which the boxes continue to 16 accumulating roller conveyors.

”The boxes are provided with a loose cover pile knobs. In that way the layers are loaded 100% straight onto the pallet, which is a must, ”says Birger Christensen. Barcode readers, placed right before the boxes enter the palletising area, ensure that the boxes arrive at the correct conveyor.

In this way “French potatoes” will not be mixed with “Plain crisps with sea salt”. Noreadable boxes are sent to a “no read conveyor”. On the accumulating roller conveyors the boxes are gathered to one entire pallet layer at a time.The capacity is 3 layers per minute and up to 15 layers per pallet.

When the last box of a whole layer enters the conveyor, a signal is sent to the palletiser to show which layers will be arriving and the pallet belonging to this product will arrive to the palletiser from two transfer cars. At the same time, the complete layer of boxes runs into the palletiser to be loaded onto the pallet.

The complete palletised pallet continues to a stretch wrapper. It is optional whether the pallet should be wrapped or not. This is defined in the individual pallet patterns, and the complete pallet is now ready for pickup at the end of the installation. It is possible to have14 full pallets on hold before the system will stop.