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Material Handling
Case Studies

FormPak partners with many leading companies in a variety of industries to improve the safety and efficiency of their operations. Check out our material handling case studies for a closer look at our solutions.

Industry focus: Brewing and Craft Beverages

Play Video about Forklift attachment for bulk bag handling

The beer and spirits industry is one of the many industries we serve. It’s also one of the fastest-growing industries for Super Sack® handling needs. FormPak has the material handling equipment for your bulk unloading and loading needs.

We have a long history of designing and building malt brewing and distilling grain systems for the craft beer and spirits industry. This includes Super Sack® dispensing systems, small bag break stations, flexible screw conveyors, disc conveyors and the controls required to integrate these into your milling and brewing equipment.

Additional capabilities include batching systems for grains (Loss-In-Weight or Gain-In-Weight scale systems), surge hoppers, flow control valves and slide gates.

By working with FormPak’s craft brewing and distilling experts to supply your grain and malt handling system, you can be assured of a custom fit, easy installation/start-up and ongoing support.

Call today, 800-936-7672, to discuss your grain material handling needs, let’s build something great together.

Some of our Brewing/Distilling customers include:

Oskar Blues Brewing

Situation

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Scope

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Solution

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Industry Focus: Major Chemical & Polymers

Situation

This customer had previously used a contract processing supplier to transfer a metal powder (nickel) from Super Sacks® to a sealed IBC. The material is a critical component in the production of plastic pellets, and would shudder the plant if a solution wasn’t found and implemented quickly. Facing a 1.5 million dollar per day loss, the engineering and management team reached out to FormPak who had just installed a fully automated bag filling system for outgoing materials. Additionally, the material was both carcinogenic, and explosive, so dust containment was critical. The incoming bulk bags came from either a Canadian or Russian source, and would require piercing of the bag to dispense (plain bottom bags).

Scope

Together the engineering teams designed a contained bag unloading system that included:

  • Indexed entry doors for loading bags and IBC’s

 

  • Integrated dust collector

 

  • A positive seal between bag outlet and IBC

 

  • A vacuum system for cleanout after transfer

Solution

The project was fast-tracked through production to insure installation and start-up before depletion of the material. The result not only eliminated the risk of plant shut-down, but put the customer in control of their destiny, and reduced costs by bringing the transfer in-house.

Industry Focus: Meat Supplier

Situation

A large pork processing company asked for help in pre-batching the seasonings for their sausage products (cajun, bratwurst, polish, etc.). The goal was to reduce batch-to-batch turnover time, increase accuracy, and save on raw material cost and handling.

Their existing system involved operators dumping full and partial 50# bags and drums of material directly into the blender as it sat idle. This included pre-weighing small (partial) weighments, physically handling of the containers (repetitive lifting risk), slowing the batch-to-batch times, and led to inconsistent, and sometimes wasted  batches due to lack of verification.

Scope

Together the customer and FormPak teams designed a dual LIW (Loss-In-Weight) Super Sack® system that included:

  • Flexible screws as the metering device
  • A scale hopper (batch verification) located above the blender with a slide gate for discharge upon verified batch.

The LIW system allowed for the fastest batch creation and could be completed as the previous batch was mixed with the pork in the blender on the floor below.

Solution

The system started as a (2) ingredient system with salt and a single spice as the constituents. The customer later added a second set of unloaders/screws for a (4) ingredient batching system. They simply enter the batch required from the recipe system, and the batch is created. Once verified by scale hopper, and blender below is ready, the operator opens the actuated slide gate to dispense.

Industry Focus: Pest Control

Situation

New packaging lines for this manufacturer of pest control products lead to the requirement to design and build a bulk bag unloading system with integrated cable-disc conveyor.

Scope

These systems needed to be plug-and-play once delivered, to integrate with the packaging line installations, so a full factory test run was required at FormPak’s factory.

The systems were assembled, controls were wired to run material, issues de-bugged, and everything ran to ensure they were ready to go once they arrived.

Solution

Working with the customer on design, implementation, and start-up, resulted in a smooth installation and reliable systems to provide their growing demand.

Industry focus: Soybean Hodo Soy

Hodo Soy required a bulk bag dispenser (Fork Loaded), and a flexible screw to elevate soybeans into soak tanks.  A traversing cart riding on rails over the (5) sets of tanks, and a diverter valve that feeds Right/Left to hit desired tank via automated controls.

To use the batching system (Loss-In-Weight), the operator will simply enter the desired batch in the scale controller/indicator display and hit “Start”. Conveyor will run at full flow then to dribble flow position to pre-set weight, then stop at target weight. Selecting the desired tank is done on a programmed touch screen (HMI) and directs the powered cart to destination via photo eyes, and opens the required slide gate on the diverter valve.

Industry focus: Energy

Situation

Green Power Inc. a division of Clean Energy Projects was in the process of scaling-up a new biodiesel production plant. Their unique municipal waste to bio-diesel process offers the promise of clean biodiesel production from a feed stock that is nearly unlimited. One of the challenges was to convey the raw material (processed municipal waste called “fluff”) that was likened to cellulose up 40’ and onto a 150’ belt conveyor to the inlet of a reactor vessel. The infeed, however, needed to accommodate the introduction of (2) additional dry materials (lime and zeolite).

Scope

FormPak provided the design and construction of a dry material metering and conveying system consisting of the following equipment:

  • (1)-R(1)-Large vibratory feeder for the fluff material
  • (2)-Small vibrator feeders for the minor additives
  • (1)-Interlocking bucket elevator
  • (1)-Slider belt conveyor
  • (2)-Loss-In-Weight fork loaded bulk bag unloaders

Solution

The system meters the fluff into the bucket elevator. As it passes under the two bulk bag unloaders, the minor materials are sprinkled onto the fluff via loss-in-weight batching controls. The materials are then elevated 40’ to the belt conveyor for delivery into the reactor.

Industry Focus: Animal Feed

Situation

For over 40 years, Zupreem has understood that the single most important influence on an animal’s health is nutrition. Many of their products in the past were blended and packaged offsite by contract packing firms. This was not only costly, but their production and timing were out of their control. In 2009, they elected to bring this ingredient batching system in-house.

Scope

FormPak provided all the material handling and recipe management systems. This project was expanded to include the following components:

  • (1)-Recipe management, retrieval, and programming system (HMI)
  • (7)-Hoist & Trolley style bulk bag unloaders
  • (1)-Bag break and box dump station
  • (7)-Vibratory tray feeders with screening beds
  • (1)-Slider bed style cleated belt conveyor

Solution

The system meters the materials volumetrically via vibratory feeders (with 100/1 turndown or percentage of batch control) onto the cleated belt conveyor according to the recipe that has been selected. Products are “mixed” proportionally by layering onto the belt, then up to a distribution/mixing head above the bagging line.