12 meters for a finished pallet

For the Australian company Natures Organics Gerhard Schubert has devised a highly compact casepacking and palletisation system, which has enabled improvement of overall efficiency on shampoo and conditioner packaging lines.

A TLM F2 robot erects the flat carton blanks and places them on the Transmodul.

The Transmodul with the erected cartons moves on to the loading station. A TLM F2 robot picks up four bottles at a time from the grouping table and places them in the cartons.

The cartons are filled with the plastic bottles and then transported to the closing station. The cartons are securely fixed during all process steps.

The new TLM packing system processes 55 cartons per minute and palletises five layers of cartons. It can handle a total of eight pallets an hour.

Natures Organics is synonymous in Austrialia with body and homecare products based on natural ingredients, with a factory in the Melbourne area over 40.000 sqm in size.
The company has adopted a vertically integrated manufacturing process, starting with the production of plastic bottles with lids made from rPET (recycled PET). Raw materials for the company’s wide variety of care products are mixed in tanks from 5 to 30 metric tons and filled into bottles using high-performance lines. The next steps cover cartonizing and palletizing in the sizes required in each specific case.
In time the company has managed to gear itself toward the needs of its trade partners. Thanks to this aptitude and lots of perseverance of entrepreneur Justin Dowel, this has enabled them to enter into the listings of the large supermarket chains.
Committed to enabling the greatest number of people to be able to afford their natural personal care and homecare products, any time Dowel fields technological investments for Natures Organics (Ferntree Gully) he wonders aboveall whether they will contribute to the quality and cost efficiency of production over the longterm.
When it came time to acquire a new cartonizing and palletizing line, Gerhard Schubert GmbH (represented in Australia by Selpak, South Hurstville), won the tender with an offer capable of satisfying specific demands, respecting the limits imposed by the surface available. Furthermore, thanks to its high performance and reduced operating costs, the system has been considered a sustainable investment.

Four bottles instead of twenty four
Currently, the retail sector shows increasing demand for shelf-ready cartons containing smaller quantities. Thanks to its new line from Schubert, Natures Organics is ready and able to respond.
The cartonizing and palletizing line for shampoo and conditioner was commissioned in March of 2013 and currently handles the following sizes and output levels:
- two 400 ml and one 500 ml plastic bottle with an oval basic shape;
- cartonizing of four bottles at a time (single row);
- palletizing of five carton layers;
- 55 cartons/min for all sizes;
- 8 pallets/h.
The company’s previous packaging line shrink-wrapped six bottles at a time and then cartonized four of these packs using the wrap-around procedure. It was not possible to set it up for the new required size and the line could not be modified. Hence the decision to replace the plant, also due to its excessive size (the old plant follwedconcept of conventional packaging lines, where individual units and machines are coupled one after the other, with an overall length of nearly 40 meters).

Compact construction. While researching new solutions, Justin Dowel determined that Schubert was the only provider who could meet his needs for space efficiency. The TLM line is comprised of four sub-machines, which measure just 12 meters in length altogether. Schubert is able to achieve this level of compactness because its TLM technology integrates all the needed functions. Both spatially, and in terms of software, everything is under a single roof. That’s why the line created for Natures Organics needs only one line management system and just a single employee to operate it.

Secure handling provided by the transmodule. The production of shelf-ready packaging comes along with a variety of challenges. Relative to its height, the carton has a small footprint. To achieve the high number of working cycles required, the cartons have to be securely stabilized so that they don’t fall over.
Schubert utilizes the transmodule for this purpose. The patented transmodule is an intelligent rail-based transport robot. The transmission of energy and data is contactless. Exchangeable size plates lie on the transport carriage. In this case, they fit the shelf-ready cartons. A robot erects the carton from the flat-lying blank and places it on the transmodule. The transmodule first moves to the loading station and then stops at the sealing station. The cartons are securely held in place during all the process steps.

Two-axis robots work together A good design idea and powerful system components are also required by the gluing flap on the inside of the carton lid. In order for this closure to achieve a full surface bind, the designers at Schubert provided two of the tried-and-tested two-axis TLM-F2 robots. One robot closes the carton, and the second presses on the lateral surface of the carton.

Advantages
Since being commissioned, the line’s positive performance data has been accumulating. Justin Dowel is very happy that his team really enjoys working with the line. The cartonizing and palletizing line has been running reliably from the start. Size changes are handled quickly, and when size parts need to be exchanged, the line starts up again immediately, at full output, without the need for any readjustments after the change.
Satisfaction has also been expressed by the maintenance and assistance service fielded by Schubert and Selpak. «These specialists understand what we need and help us to find the ideal solution. Freeing up needed space made room for a pallet-stretch winder which serves all five production lines».