For privately owned New Zealand food company Sutton Group, the impressive growth in the volume of business at its can line outside Auckland presented it with a challenge – how to equip itself to efficiently and speedily meet the needs of its customers.
Over the past 25 years Suttons has established itself within the food, beverage and dairy industries in New Zealand and overseas based on a track record of excellence and innovation.
As part of the growing business at its facilities, it realised its can lines needed to be upgraded and expanded. In particular, the company determined it required new equipment to assist in the automatic feeding of empty, open top cans, into its powder filling process lines.
To assist with this, the company approached automation specialist, Melbourne-based JMP Engineering to installed a robotic can depalletising system.
JMP general manager, Paul Vassallo, says his company proposed a robotic solution, with a purpose-built magnetic gripper head.
The solution enables two lines to be handled by one robot, with various can sizes being run on either line simultaneously.
“Layers of cans are deposited on demand to mass feed tables, sorted and then fed using modular belt conveyors into the process hall for cleaning and filling,” Vassallo explains.
He says the layout of the line needed to be flexible, as well as incorporate special features, to fit Sutton's specific production paths.
From the process hall, the layer boards of cans are then deposited into a cassette within the robot cell for easy removal and re use.
Once there, the pallets are in turn fed to re-stacker units, providing a neat stack ready for return to the adjacent can plant.
Vassallo says the installation met all Sutton's needs... and then some.
“The system is fully commissioned, and performing well,” he says.
Sutton’s new palletising solution from JMP Engineering enables a single robot to handle two lines.
