Cargill Meats are the suppliers of chicken wings and nuggets to probably the most famous fast food chains in the world.

When Cargills were looking to upgrade their facility in Balliol they approached WSS as a potential supplier for the end of line palletising system.

Initially the brief was to replace the existing layer palletiser with new state of the art layer palletisers but after some detailed analysis WSS put forward two solutions, one for layer palletisers and one for robots.

The additional space and flexibility offered by the robot solution proved to be the key decider and Cargills placed an order with WSS for the robot solution.

The first job on site was to decommission and remove the existing packaging line and palletiser so that floor preparation works for the new system could be completed.

These works were due to be completed by others but due to supplier issues, WSS undertook the works and the remit was expanded to include removal of the full packing line including everything from the spiral freezer through multihead weighing, bag packing and up to the palletiser.

The new plant included 2 palletising robots each dedicated to one production line running up to 10 cases per minute with multiple case formats and pallet patterns.

Each robot was fed by a dedicated conveyor line using a combination of stainless steel Ambaveyor and stainless steel 24v conveyors.

A dedicated pallet dispenser of WSS manufacture presented single pallets to the lower deck of a twin deck transfer car.

A two tier conveyor in each robot cell allowed full pallets to be transferred out of the cell onto the upper tier of the transfer car whilst empty pallets were delivered to the cell from the lower tier.

Hydraulic scissor lifts are used to move pallets from lower to upper tiers in the robot cell and there is one empty plus one full holding position within each cell. Fast acting roller doors are used to protect the robot cells on the cell exit side. Doors are normally closed as shown in the picture and only open during pallet transfer cycles. To complete the safety guarding WSS designed their own range of stainless steel fencing.

The transfer car delivers full pallets to the take away conveyor where they are fed to an automatic stretch wrapper and pallet labeller. Full pallets are then delivered to low level (+100mm) via an elevator before transferring through an Eiger door into the cold store.