Intermittent, Wrap Around & Tray and Hood

Challenge

Wilmar Sugar has been a long standing RML Machinery customer in both Australia and New Zealand since 2012. Their challenge was to create shelf-ready cartoned products to save supermarkets’ in-store labour.

This, plus a complete overhaul of the product packaging formats into smaller 250 and 500 gram sizes led to their desire to install a completely automated new line.

They needed 24/7 reliability plus the flexibility to handle 26 different SKU’s of sugar in some tricky product formats such as caster and icing sugar which needed to be very carefully stacked.

Read our in-depth Case Study here.

Solution

First, we collaborated with Wilmar’s group technical manager to design new boxes with tear-off top and front panels. Then we fine-tuned the bulk density settings on the filling machines to get the volumes per bag just right.

We installed an easy-to-read HMI (human-machine interface) which provided the ability to change products on demand. This resulted in big labour savings with just one operator able to monitor the whole line. The solution took tried and tested methodologies to stack each set of bags into a chimney-style casing. An ABB robotic arm then reorientated and relocated these on a flat box which went into the wrapping module.

We installed the first system at the Chelsea Sugar Factory in Auckland and followed up with two identical lines in Yarraville, Victoria.