A customer contacted us requiring a new piece of equipment to assist on site with loading a new large steel press roller on site. The company was manufacturing plastic film packaging for the food industry and needed a piece of equipment to lift up a large steel roller at the start of the process. The steel roller was to be lifted 870mm from the floor and would need changing several times per shift.

The area in which the operator had to work was very restricted in terms of space, the turning circle was very tight and we also had the additional headache of existing machinery and racking in the way. Plus on top of this there was hardly any clearance above the machine.

Firstly we tried a standard stacker to see how easy this would be to manoeuvre for the customer, the overall physical weight was too much for the operators to push and was fairly awkward to steer within the very restricted workplace area.

We trialled several pieces of equipment and many modifications were incorporated to meet the various customer expectations including the fitting of special caroxilated nitrile front loading rollers that was kinder to the product and print machine.

Approximately 12 weeks elapsed between the start of the project and the delivery of four new lifting units, so in all a really quick turnaround of the whole project. The customer is now delighted with the outcome and looking to add more new units in the coming months.

We'll let the customer have the final word: "For transporting and lifting packaging reels, we choose Action Handling."

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