Unilever

Palletising of margarine

A traditional, fully automatically palletising solution handles trays with margarine at Unilever in Katowice. 

Unilever is the owner of the margarine production plant in Katowice that consists of the margarine production department, storehouse of packaging for margarine, the raw materials storehouse and the refinery. It is here that Unilever produces the world’s oldest brand margarine - Rama.

Unilever currently occupies the leading position in Europe in terms of margarine production.

The packing lines at Unilever Polska SA were not operator free when it came to placing the products onto pallets. This was expensive, and could restrict the company´s ability to increase volumes in the future. Therefore Unilever was looking for a solution which could increase the productivity. 

 

DAN-Palletiser is preferred supplier within the Unilever Concern. A succesfull installation and cooperation with Unilever in Leeds has resulted in Unilever, Katowice in Poland, having purchased four fully automatically MK3 palletisers from DAN-Palletiser.

Installation
The palletising solution is based on four MK3 high load palletisers, palletising from five lines at the same time.

The main challenge was a lack of space in the production area, but the MK3 high load palletisers are very little space demanding. 
 

In close co-operation between Krzysztof Machura, project engineer at Unilever Polska SA, and DAN-Palletiser the area was utilized in the best possible way. DAN-Palletiser´s sales representative in Poland, MAS Trading, ensured that the schedule was followed and the installation was carried out successfully, and in due time.

 

Description of the palletiser solution
The products arrive from the production lines packed in wrapped trays. The trays run through the packing lines in two levels to be packed on the pallets according to different pallet patterns.

DAN-Palletiser receives the packs on a spiral conveyor, and the packs continue on another conveyor to the palletisers. The pattern is formed according to the pattern selected from the variety of patterns available. When a row is ready in front of the pusher the row is pushed onto the dead plate. This is repeated until the whole layer is full.

The whole layer is pushed out onto the loading plate, the elevator is going down, centrering the layer over the pallet, front guides and side guides are going in, as well as the strip bar. The loading plate is withdrawing and the layer is transferred onto the pallet. This is repeated until the pallet is full. The full pallet then continues out onto the chain cross, and from there onto the existing conveyors and through a hood stretch unit.

The same cycle is repeated on all palletisers, and operator platforms make it possible to operate the manual functions, as well as changing the various patterns.