Bega Cheese prioritises safety with assisted handling equipment

Located on the South Coast of NSW amongst idyllic holiday locations, Bega Cheese has grown to be a $1 billion turnover company, manufacturing a range of cheeses to suit a variety of palates: from cream cheese, which is highly sought after in Asia, through to its gold medal-winning ‘Strong and Bitey Vintage Cheddar’.

Darryl Flaherty, production manager - process improvement at Bega Cheese, says that safety is paramount in their manufacturing plant, and is considered as ‘caring for mates’.

“Bega Cheese also realise that accident downtime is to be avoided and have always been prepared to outlay investment to prevent potential accident situations, which has an immediate return on investment,” said Flaherty.

Such an investment has been the utilisation of Tawi vacuum-assisted lifting systems and Protema hoists from Kockums Bulk Systems.

Three specific handling applications of this equipment are detailed below:

1. Use of the Protema trolley to enable pick or place of a roll of labels:

This trolley system means there is no need for rollout racking to be installed. With the Protema trolley rolled under the bottom shelf, the core gripper is able to reach the rear rolls. It is then inserted and grips instantly by touching the control lever. The roll is then lifted by the mast attachment, using the hand control, and the trolley enables moving it to a packaging machine.

2. A Kockums core gripper attached to a hoist is used to reposition another sized roll:

The core gripper is introduced into the core, and at the touch of the lever an attachment is made, and the roll is then lifted and relocated:

At the stage of release, the core gripper is rotated through 90°, which allows the roll to be placed on the shelf, and the core gripper extracted:

3. Tawi vacuum operated Vacu-easylifts are used to pick a pair of boxes simultaneously for de-palletising, and then positioning them onto a conveyor: