Compost - Form Fill Seal
Client
Bathgate Horticulture produces bagged horticultural products including compost, topsoil and lawn food.
Bathgate Horticulture selected Webster Griffin for the installation of a high throughput total solutions line with Webster Griffin holding vast experience in providing complete bagging, palletising and stretch wrapping lines.
Challenge
Bathgate Horticulture wanted turn key full automation to ensure maximum throughput and raise the productivity levels of their horticulture products line.
In creating their solution Webster Griffin had to deliver:
- The need for a fully automated system ensuring that production targets were obtained.
- Reduction in resources allocated to the system.
- Continuous production around the clock.
- Stable waterproofed pallets suitable for transportation.
- Bagging of different bag sizes and products .
- Seamless end to end packing through the bagging, palletising and wrapping processes.
- An advanced control system with the scope to change bagging, palletising and hooding patterns to cater to different production tasks.
- Neat, compact, pallets ready for transportation.
Solution
Having analysed Bathgate Horticulture's requirements, Webster Griffin recommended a complete bagging, palletising, conveying and stretch hooding system adding options as follows:
- Compost mixing and conveying system to feed product to the Form Fill Seal machine.
- High Speed Form Fill Seal Machine – CV4080
- Volumetric dosing system suitable for handling peat, sand, and soil mixtures.
- Heavy duty belt infeed conveyors
- Compressive bag flattener ensuring a compact square bag suitable for palletising
- Okura A1800 High Throughput Palletising Robot
- Advanced Okura's OXPA windows based software allows operators to create new palletising patterns and optimise existing patterns in order to produce symmetrical palletised stacks.
- Self-optimising Okura Control Software – ensuring consistent speed and accuracy for ‘precision palletising’.
- High Tech Okura special bag hand for larger bags ensuring consistent speed and accuracy for grasping and ‘precision placing’.
- Automatic fork type empty pallet magazine
- Automatic Integrated pallet hooding system to provide complete waterproof pallet protection.
- Integrated system of mechanised conveyors to ensure complete automation.
Result
The complete system underwent Factory Acceptance Testing prior to commissioning by a Webster Griffin engineer, Bathgate Horticulture has experienced various benefits including:
- Continuous production around the clock allowing Bathgate Horticulture to cater to customer demands
- Reduced labour input – the fully automatic system reduced labour input
- Increased flexibility with the Okura intelligent system accommodating palletising various bags sizes
- Reduced maintenance through the systems durability with ability to cope with industrials environments due to few moving parts and low maintenance.
- Bathgate Horticulture can now achieve a high throughput up to 28 bags a minute.
- A bagging throughput up to 28 bags a minute with a minimal throughput of 19 sacks a minute achieved on the 80 litres bags.
Case Images
Other Industry Experience
