ECS speeds Turner turn-around
April 1st 2005

High volume carton handling equipment with has been installed by European Conveyor Systems at a Davies Turneroperated distribution centre near Dartford, Kent.

The warehouse provides third party logistics to a wide variety of clients in the South East, many of them 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 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.

It also wanted a safe, convenient method of delivering outbound cartons from the three mezzanine floors down to the despatch area, where they can either be loaded directly onto trailers or batched/palletised before loading.

For in-coming goods, ECS installed four powered flexible conveyors (long enough to reach inside trailers trailers parked at the docks), each linked via belt conveyors to a high-speed lightweight vertical carton lift. 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 mezzanine. Completing up to 300 cycles an hour, the lifts take up minimal space in the despatch area.

Rather than using a chute, out-bound cartons from the three upper decks are delivered to the ground floor by a central belt conveyor to aid manual handling and avoid damage to fragile products. The belts can be reversed with throughputs of 1200 cartons/hour.

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