No disruption to production of Italian delicatessen products

Each year Fratelli Beretta ships 40,000 pallets of delicatessen products from its Milan factory. Automatic PAL-Cut palletising saves precious time and money and prevents disruption to production for food specialists.

At Fratelli Beretta, they are continuously optimising the process, and recently they have improved the packing of finished products onto pallets. Each year, the factory ships 40,000 pallets of products, i.e. one every six minutes, and that is why the process has been carefully analysed. Palletising has caused problems before, among other things because many pallets were collapsing during transport, and this has been very expensive.

The solution was a sheet dispenser with Antim non-slip paper from palletising specialist PAL-Cut,. The non-slip sheets replace intermediate sheets made of corrugated cardboard that have been used until now. The Antim sheets only weigh 110 g/m², but most importantly: it has a special coating. The coating secures the packaging so that individual layers on the pallets remain stable during transport.

Simpler and cheaper than the alternatives
The alternative to automatic sheet dispensing with non-slip paper would have been to wrap the pallets in twice as much stretch film. But in Italy companies pay a fee to dispose of packaging to CONAI, an organisation that manages taxes for the disposal of packaging materials. And it is particularly expensive to dispose of stretch film, which costs EUR 188 per tonne, compared to EUR 4 per tonne for paper packaging materials.

“It is very expensive to use stretch film and dispose of it afterwards,” says Simone Amigoni, assistant factory manager in Medolago. He then elaborates: “Our financial estimate clearly indicated that the PAL-Cut solution with Antim non-slip sheets is a good cost-reducing investment because there are significantly fewer pallet collapses, the stretch film charge is halved and there is higher customer satisfaction due to fewer pallet collapses.”

More gains during production
According to Fratelli Beretta, they have experienced several gains in the form of more uptime and faster lead times after investing in PAL-Cut, which in addition to non-slip sheets includes a fully automatic sheet dispenser that is integrated with the palletising line. The sheets will be cut automatically from a paper roll and fed out individually. The packing robot will pick up the non-slip sheet and put it on the pallet between the layers of products.

For hygenic reasons the pallets are built up with a sheet at the bottom to protect the sausages packings from direct contact with the wood and dirt from below. Then the layers of products are loaded, alternating between sausage products and intermediate sheets. In addition to the base sheet, they also use two to three Antim non-slip sheets depending on whether the pallet is built up using nine or 11 layers of products, before wrapping it all in a minimal layer of stretch film so that it is ready for transport.

Less manual and time-consuming work, more profit
Considering the factory ships a pallet every six minutes, automation could give major gains. PAL-Cut has also contributed significantly.
“Thanks to the PAL-Cut solution we haven’t had any disruption to production, and we’re saving on storage space for sheets. We’re also spared the laborious manual reloading of sheets in the palletising line,” says a satisfied Simone Amigoni. The assistant factory manager will not reveal how much the company is saving using the PAL-Cut solution, but implies that it is a significant amount.

At Fratelli Beretta, no one misses the previous solution where pallets loaded with intermediate sheets made of corrugated cardboard were positioned by the packing robot just outside the safety zone. New cardboard sheets had to be supplied every 30 minutes, and these needed to be carried to the pallet manually.

Before, a number of pallets stood outside of the packing zone, and these took up space. The buffer stock also meant that 52 pallets were loaded with cardboard sheets, stacked up high. Now they only need to fit a new roll of Antim non-slip paper every six days and install it using a pallet lifter.

PAL-Cut with fully automatic sheet dispensing was implemented in the Medolago factory’s largest packing line in October 2015. At Beretta, they are very satisfied with the PAL-Cut solution and are now starting to evaluate its potential for some of their other factories.
“Beretta’s production management has been very willing to listen to our experiences. This has ensured very quick and easy implementation of the PAL-Cut solution,” says Giacomo Sammartino, sales manager for PAL-Cut in Italy.