Central palletising systems
CKF Systems, a UK provider of central palletising systems, employs around 50 engineering personnel at its modern 25,000 sqft premises in Gloucester.
The company operates primarily within the food, pharmaceutical and automotive industries, providing automated solutions across almost every aspect of the production cycle with the design, build and installation of central palletising systems where CKF has gained the most recognition.
Typical examples of recent systems would include Cadbury in Sheffield, where CKF designed and installed a new palletising system incorporating three robot-palletising cells, each comprised of an ABB IRB660 robot with a vacuum gripper together with a pallet handling system including pallet dispensers and high speed stretch wrappers. The robots also have the ability to handle three separate pallet sizes with weights of up to 250 kilograms each, resulting in multiple box pick-up to reduce cycle times and maximise throughput.
The CKF solution has provided Cadbury with fast, flexible palletising capabilities and productivity has vastly improved. It has also further strengthened Cadbury’s high standards of safety and reduced its carbon footprint. By increasing stacking heights to 1.7 metres, more products can be stacked on a single pallet; adding more pallets means a greater volume of stock is delivered using fewer vehicles and better utilising warehouse space.
CKF’s achievements span three decades and it continues to utilise latest technologies and engineering excellence to provide its customers with a competitive edge. In recent years the automation and robotics specialist has invested heavily to strengthen its in house capabilities and moved in to new premises a cost of £1.5m.
“At CKF we are able to take full responsibility of everything from the end of line conveying through to a centralised location including the installation of a full robotic system,” sales director Kevin Staines said. “It can include stretch wrapping of pallets, labelling if required, double stacking prior to despatch and the moving of product through to the departure bays. We work across a range of industries where the challenges of central palletising invariably have a high degree of complexity.”