27 March 2012 – The installation of wrapping equipment by a UK ice cream manufacturer has resulted in cost savings.

When a new packaging line was being considered for the plant, a key requirement was that production of the main plant must be able to continue even if the operation of the packaging line was temporarily interrupted.

One way of achieving this would have been to provide an accumulation conveyor but, as the output of the plant is up to 300 cartons per minute, this would have occupied a lot of space. In addition, to prevent damage to the cartons during accumulation, the conveyor would have had to be designed for zero back pressure, which would have increased costs. With this in mind, Linkx Systems and the end user project team worked together to devise an alternative solution incorporating two Matrix collator/shrink wrappers.

Matrix machines can achieve a throughput of 600 cartons per minute thanks to servo drive technology and control systems based on Allen Bradley Equipment, in line with the site standard.

The customer requirement of continuous operation is achieved as long as one of the pair of machines is operating. In normal operation, however, both machines run, each handling half of the cartons produced by the line.

Using two matrix machines not only saves space, as they feature a very compact design, but also saves money, as the cost of the additional Matrix machine was substantially less than that of the accumulation system that would otherwise have been needed.