Related Case Studies
Industry: Food & Beverage
Tropicana
Both Tropicana’s carton and plastic packaging are engineered to maintain the highest quality and freshness. The packaging materials ensure the juice stays fresh inside the packaging by preventing outside moisture and light from affecting its superior quality. To uphold the juice’s fresh taste, Tropicana distributes its products with state-of-the-art refrigerated trucks and specially-designed rail cars delivering to several distribution centers around North America. The 5 days per week scheduled train route that delivers from the Bradenton, Florida facility to the North East Distribution Center in Jersey City, NJ has been dubbed the “Juice Train” by railcar aficionados for years.
SITUATION
With consistent volume increases and the mechanical age of the existing Continuous Vertical Conveyor (CVC), Tropicana NJ decided to upgrade their CVC with a higher rate unit capable of meeting the increasing demands of their customers.
ASSESSMENT
As a customer focused business, Tropicana strives for continuous improvement in material handling performance, reliability and redundancy. The existing CVC was no longer mechanically sound and capable of meeting the pallet transport rates required to meet business demands. A new CVC, capable of transporting pallets vertically at a higher rate was required. To add complexity, the mechanical and electrical demo and the mechanical and electrical installation, and programming was required to be completed over a weekend to lessen the effect on the production schedules.
SOLUTION
TriFactor designed and installed a new Continuous Vertical Conveyor, taking pallets from an elevation of 36” to 285”. Additionally, new Chain Driven Live Roller (CDLR) pallet feeder conveyor was installed mechanically and electrically.
RESULT
The project provided Tropicana with the capability of increasing the number of pallets transported through the elevation change while increasing efficiency and effectively using available cubic space. By implementing this equipment replacement, Tropicana is able to increase pallet transport rates while minimizing the impact to existing operations.
ROI
2 – 3 Years
- Customer:
- Tropicana Products, Inc
- TriFactor Provided:
- Design engineering
- Material Handling Equipment
- Mechanical & Electrical Installation
- PLC Controls and HMI
- Programming
- On-site Rigging, Project Management & Coordination of Trades
- Size:
- 220,000 square feet
- Facility Type:
- Cold Storage Warehousing & Distribution
- Products Handled:
- Pallets of Beverages
- Markets Served:
- Northeast U.S.
- Products Utilized:
- Continuous Vertical Conveyor (CVC)
- Chain Driven Live Roller Conveyor (CDLR)
