New Facility Achieves Compact Footprint with Automatic Palletizers

Barcel USA, is a growing manufacturer in the bakery and snack food markets. When designing a new plant in Coppell, Texas, the company included a fully integrated palletizing system. Five new high-level palletizers have helped the company automate palletizing, stretch wrapping and transportation to storage.

Operational since December 2013, the new facility was designed to require minimal warehouse space for the new end-of-line packaging equipment. The automated solution needed to have an extremely compact footprint, but also provide flexibility in handling the variety of products manufactured at the facility. Francisco Zamora, Barcel’s project engineer, was tasked with overseeing the packaging automation project.

“Our operators often comment on how easy it is to operate the system,” Zamora says. “Since the installation, we have received excellent performance from the system and the palletizers have operated above our expectations.”

The turnkey solution (Columbia Machine) included five high-level palletizers and integrated in-feed case conveyors, spiral elevators and ring stretch wrapper. Five independent case packers (provided by another supplier) feed the multi-line conveyor systems with sealed cases. These cases enter one of the five spiral conveyors at a maximum of 10 cases per minute per line. Each spiral conveyor discharges onto transport case conveyor to the palletizer dedicated to its line.

Once the cases have been palletized and a full pallet load is created, the palletized load is discharged onto the full load conveyor system. This system integrates all five palletizer discharge conveyors into one trunk line. Full loads are transferred from chain conveyor onto chain-driven live roller (CDLR) conveyor. The CDLR conveyor transports the full loads from the palletizers to the rotary ring stretch wrapper. Once the pallet load is wrapped, it is discharged onto CDLR for pick-up and delivery to warehouse storage.

Related: Pack Expo Show to Feature Columbia Machine’s HL7200 High Level Inline Palletizer