A BREATH OF FRESH AIR SAY CHEESE WAR ON ... - GEA Group

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22 The Bonduelle Group is a world-leading supplier of canned and frozen vegetables, sold in 80 countries. It also produces packs of salad for the European market and fresh vegetables, mainly for the French market. Estrées-Mons in northern France is where the group’s biggest plant is located. Here the company cans and freezes locally-grown peas, carrots, green beans, Brussels sprouts, leeks, spinach, potatoes and courgettes. The cold store also receives products, particularly corn, from other Bonduelle plants in South West France, Spain, Portugal and Poland. Poisgourmand is one of many frozen products that Bonduelle produce.
In 2008 Bonduelle embarked on a project to modernize and expand the freezing facility to make it more competitive and save on energy. Former Plant Engineer Gilles Grimaud project managed the building of a new high-bay, fully automated, cold store which began operations in 2011. He has since been made responsible for energy saving at all Bonduelle’s 50 plants. Q. What did the project involve? a. As project manager I was responsible for construction, logistics and software. We started planning in October 2008 and construction began a year later. By the autumn of 2010 we began installing the conveying systems and, six months later, were ready to take the first pallet of frozen products. A key part of the project was linking the GDE ERP (enterprise resource planning) software, which contains orders from our customers, with the PIC microcontrollers and Ulma packaging systems so that all the systems ‘speak’ to each other automatically. Over five months we gradually transferred from the old to the new storage facility, which has now been fully operational since September 2011. The project involved people from different specialties, from ten different companies, working together to create something special. Q. How does it compare with the old system? a. Previously we had just five levels of shelving and goods were moved by forklift truck. The new building is 38 meters high, 45 meters wide and 85 meters long – a total capacity of 145,000m³. It has 14 levels of shelving which hold a total of 23,000 pallets, each containing several boxes of frozen goods, and there are 700 different products. Pallets are lifted on and off the shelves by six storage and retrieval robots. Everything is fully automatic and we know exactly where each pallet is. The pallets are transported between the shelves and the loading bays via a Daifuku sorting and conveyor system. From the loading bays they are forklifted onto trucks and delivered throughout Europe. During a ten-hour period1,500 pallets will be moved in and out of the store and we ship 200,000 pallets a year, which is 120,000 tonnes. Q. Are these systems unique to Bonduelle? a. No, other companies have similar automatic storage systems. But what is unique to us is the pick and place robot. Orders are received at noon, processed by computer and then from 6pm to 6am the robot automatically picks and packs the products. Q. How do you maintain the correct storage temperature? a. The temperature is kept at -18ºC, the same as your freezer at home. GEA Refrigeration France, who we have worked with for 20 years, installed two screw type ammonia refrigeration units that provide suction temperatures down to -28°C. What is really useful is that, instead of the horizontal air flow that you usually have in cold stores, GEA provided air coolers with evaporator coils designed to circulate the air vertically which ensures that all levels of the storage unit are at the correct temperature. The coolers have frequency inverters that control the speed of the fans to balance the level of cold required. This configuration from GEA saved a lot of energy. Consumption used to be around 35 kilowatts per hour per cubic meter per year. Now it is only 12-15 kilowatts. Q. What other energy-saving measures have you used? a. To prevent the ground from freezing you need to heat it underneath. Glycol is injected into an underground pipe at 20°C and when it comes back it is only 12°C so we can reuse it in the air conditioning system. Another energy-saving feature is the double doors linking the loading bays to the cold store. Q. Are there any specific safety features? a. We have reduced the percentage of oxygen in the cold store by adding nitrogen. The normal atmosphere contains 21 per cent oxygen but in the freezer it is 18 per cent, the same as 2,000 meters above sea level. Lower oxygen levels reduce the chance of fire. Q. Overall what are the benefits of the new system? a. It’s made us more competitive, it requires fewer people and we can give trucks an appointment for loading, which is better for them. And our energy costs are down from EUR 360,000 to EUR 120,000. GENERATE MAGAZINE ISSUE 15 23
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Page 3: SOLAR POWER GEA innovation is helpi
Page 6 and 7: 4 CHEESE IS BIG BUSINESS: DESPITE B
Page 8 and 9: 6 UnwraPPing Leerdammer cheese arri
Page 11 and 12: SIMPLE PRODUCTS FOR CLEANING OUR HO
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