FAST, FLEXIBLE CARTON HANDLING
BOOSTS LOADING BAY EFFICIENCY
Flexible, high-volume carton handling equipment has been installed by European Conveyor Systems at a new distribution centre near Dartford, Kent, operated by international freight forwarder Davies Turner.
The warehouse provides third-party logistics services to a wide variety of clients in South-East England, many of them in the retail sector and requiring fast response to orders. In order to maximise the space available in the despatch area, Davies Turner needed to be able to unload incoming deliveries from trailers in the loading bay as quickly as possible and deliver them with minimal manual handling to a first-floor mezzanine for sorting, palletising and then storing in the high bay warehouse.
The company also wanted a safe, convenient method of delivering out-bound cartons from the three mezzanine floors down to the despatch area, where they can either be loaded directly on to trailers or batched/palletised before loading.
For in-coming goods ECS installed four powered flexible conveyors, each linked
via belt conveyors to a high-speed lightweight vertical carton lift. The flexible
conveyors are long enough to reach inside trailers parked at any of the warehouse’s
17 loading docks. Sensors at the entrance to the lifts detect carton size and
index one or two cartons on to the lift carrier belt, which automatically sends
them to the first-floor mezzanine. The lifts take up minimal space in the despatch
area, which was essential to meet Davies Turner’s requirements, and can
complete 300 cycles an hour each.
Out-bound cartons collected from the pick-faces on the three upper decks for despatch are delivered to the ground floor by a central belt conveyor with tight curves that minimise the space they take. ECS installed a belt conveyor system rather than chutes to aid manual handling, give easier operation and avoid damage to fragile products. The belt conveyors can also be reversed to take in-coming deliveries up to the first floor, when required, with throughputs of 1200 cartons/hour.
The entire system was installed to a tight time programme and completed ahead of schedule.
February 2005
For editorial information please contact Mark Pickering on 0114 266 4668
For sales inquiries contact European Conveyor Systems Ltd on 0115 987 4363