Dunn Group's Thornton Contract.Thorntons Plc are leading manufacturers and retailers of chocolates, toffee, ice cream and other confectionery confectionery, delicacies or sweetmeats that have sugar as a principal ingredient, combined with coloring matter and flavoring and often with fruit or nuts. In the United States it is usually called candy, in Great Britain, sweets or boiled sweets. . To help maintain their position, they have invested in a [pounds]35m. infrastructure project in the form of a purpose-built manufacturing and packaging facility at Alfreton in Derbyshire. The construction group Bowmer and Kirkland Ltd worked as the main contractors for the 'design and build' of the manufacturing facility and distribution warehouse centre. Continued investment in new automated production lines in parallel with this programme ensures that Thorntons retain their competitive edge in premium chocolate manufacture. The Dunn Group Ltd, tel:0153 041 4444, were asked to design, install and commission a complete turnkey See turnkey system. conveyor Conveyor A horizontal, inclined, declined, or vertical machine for moving or transporting bulk materials, packages, or objects in a path predetermined by the design of the device and having points of loading and discharge fixed or selective. system to transport the fully erected empty boxes to the packing stations where they are manually filled with chocolates. The second part of the installation was for the packing conveyor and stations, where boxes of chocolates are assembled on a slow moving conveyor. A pallet of each type of chocolate required is taken out of the intermediate store and arranged alongside the packing conveyor belt conveyor belt One of various devices that provide mechanized movement of material, as in a factory. Conveyor belts are used in industrial applications and also on large farms, in warehousing and freight-handling, and in movement of raw materials. . Empty boxes are fed from the infeed conveyor to the packing stations where various types of chocolate Chocolate exists in several types according to the proportion of ingredients used in a particular recipe. In several instances the use of particular name designations is subject to governmental regulation. are added to the box manually as it passes along the belt. The packing belts are continuously moving to ensure the packers do not stop packing whilst empty trays are exchanged for full ones. The packing stations themselves are designed to hold three or four trays, which are placed behind the trays being packed. The outfeed conveyor is positioned at the discharge end of the checkweigher, which allows any finishing touches finishing touches finish npl the finishing touches → der letzte Schliff finishing touches npl → ultimi ritocchi mpl , such as the placement of lids, labels, any decoration and inspection to be carried out. The packing area also includes the latest developments in materials handling Materials handling The loading, moving, and unloading of materials. The hundreds of different ways of handling materials are generally classified according to the type of equipment used. , with the inclusion of a fully automated bagging line, which has a capacity of 26,000 bags a day, and a fully automated chocolate line, including carton erectors, and a new gift-wrapping machine. Throughput speeds have been doubled, with much of the continental range now running at speeds of 56 boxes a minute. |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion