Automatic Palletizing Fits the Culture at Anderson Erickson Dairy
To complement Anderson Erickson Dairy's new 17,000 square foot state-of-the-art cultured products distribution center in Des Moines, Iowa, the company was looking for the best way to automate the palletizing of its cultured products packaging lines. According to Norm Dostal, director of plant operations, the real challenge on this project was finding an automatic palletizing solution that could handle our wide range of cultured products package sizes and have the equipment fit into a fairly tight space.
As part of the overall cultured products expansion project, the company had installed in 2004 a new six-lane filler from Modern Packaging for 6 and 8 oz yogurt, with change-over to run 24 oz yogurt. Downstream of the filler was a new Spot-Pak® packer from Delkor Systems designed to pack both 6 and 8 oz cups in nine packs at 300 cups per minute, with change-over to package the 24 oz yogurt in six-count packs at 200 cups per minute. In addition to the new yogurt line, the palletizer would also be responsible for packaging the sour cream production from an older packaging line that included both 8 and 16 oz sizes at 150 cups per minute in a nine-count Spot-Pak package.