Turners and Growers go bananas over layer pickers

It is interesting how an invitation to visit and discuss one subject with a client can very quickly develop into something much more than the original discussion point.

Invariably this situation occurs due to the client not being aware of products and services available to meet a need, and sometimes not even being aware that they actually have a problem that can be solved. This type of situation is exactly what happened when Fred Furlani and Steve Leece from Cascade New Zealand were invited to visit major fruit and vegetable supplier Turners and Growers (T&G) at their Mt Wellington site.

Number one problem – solved

T&G’s logistics team of Shaun Batty and Pat Maxwell were aware they needed to improve their productivity in relation to pallet movements. All product movements were being performed by standard forklifts with a single pair of forks, carrying either one or two pallets stacked on top of each other. Two high stacks were unstable and meant the driver had to travel in reverse for the sake of visibility.

Palletised goods from inbound containers had to be unloaded singly, taken to a staging area, restacked, and then transported to ripening rooms. Some of the ripening rooms are 200 m away from the devanning area, which necessitated a lot of travelling. General product movements were also being performed in the same way, with the resulting machine and man hours being extremely high.

The idea was to install multiple load handlers (also known as single/doubles) to their forklifts. Cascade is a leading manufacturer of this type of attachment, which hydraulically opens and closes two sets of forks, thereby allowing the driver to pick up one or two pallets (side by side) at a time. The advantages of being able to carry two pallets at a time are obvious, and the T&G team were keen to trial the concept.

Number two problem – solved

During the course of discussions and site inspection, it became evident to Fred and Steve that the T&G team had other issues that could be resolved with another of Cascade’s attachments. T&G import a large volume of bananas, mostly in high cube containers. The pallets are stacked nine layers high to fill the space in the container, but they can’t be stacked in the ripening rooms in this configuration as the roofs are too low. Therefore
each stack had to have one layer removed, and these layers were then restacked to make new loads eight layers high.

The task of manually removing layers and restacking had several downfalls with respect to safety, damage to product, space utilisation and labour requirements. Fred and Steve could see a solution to this costly problem and suggested the use of a Cascade-exclusive
layer picker. This unit can be fork mounted and quickly demounted, meaning the machine can be used to perform standard pallet work when not needed for bananas.

Trials were successfully undertaken to ensure the reasonably delicate fruit was not bruised during the clamping operation, and subsequently one unit was ordered. This has since proven to be a godsend, with more units likely to be ordered for other depots.

With a single attachment, T&G has improved safety of staff, increased productivity immensely, improved stack configuration and reduced space utilisation. In fact, labour requirements have reduced by over 11 percent. Also of real interest to T&G is that the extra layer they can now order allows full utilisation of container space, resulting in a significant reduction in shipping costs and helping to reduce their carbon footprint.

Specialists in their field

In addition to the layer picker, the team has installed two sets of single/double pallet handlers, sharing these with their cousins at Turners Transport who use the attachments at other times of the day.

“In our industry, margins are tight, which stretches the lateralthought processes when trying to optimise an operation like ours,” says Shaun Batty. “The challenge has been to identify cost-efficient solutions that allow us to increase fl exibility and productivity, whilst
ensuring a safer working environment. This is where we recognised the need to have experts look at the situation from a specialist perspective. The Cascade team worked with both us and our forklift supplier to discuss the matter, and arrange trials for both attachments. We proved the theory which made the decision to purchase virtually risk-free.”

Pat Maxwell adds: “Since installing the layer picker, we have discovered other uses on the buying fl oor, not considered in our initial concept plan, which means we are benefiting even more than originally anticipated.”

Cascade manufactures a wide range of attachments, all designed to improve productivity, fl exibility and safety. They work closely with the forklift industry and will happily visit sites to assist with any materials handling project, including special one-off designs.

For further information, email steve.leece@cascorp.com or visit www.cascorp.com