Hardly any other industry has to handle such large quantities at such high speed as the beverage processing industry: almost 30,000 crates move from production to storage at the Herford brewery every day. And the trend is rising - as are the logistics requirements at the largest brewery in East Westphalia. For this reason, the company turned to the conveyor technology manufacturer HaRo Anlagen- und Fördertechnik. An old conveyor line was to be replaced by a modern line. However, the new system was not only to act as a conveying interface between production and the warehouse, it also had to provide a means of buffering and balancing two floors. HaRo ultimately impressed with a concept consisting of a vertical conveyor and driven roller conveyors, which has been able to cope with the growing capacity utilization of the Herford brewery since it was commissioned in April 2022.

In its inquiry, the brewery was already able to define its requirements in concrete terms. The aim was to design an automated connecting line between production and the warehouse that could be used at short notice as a buffer for the pallets to be transported. As production and the warehouse are on different levels, it was also necessary to balance the floors. The design management team at HaRo, led by Markus Löseke, finally came up with a suitable solution.

The material flow in detail

In the production area on the upper floor, the pallets are loaded automatically from the upstream conveyor system. The adjacent and driven HaRo roller conveyors from the "Quickflex" product group then transport the 40 boxes per pallet fully automatically into the vertical conveyor. "Frequency-controlled drives on the vertical conveyor allow the pallets to move in and out of the vertical conveyor at twice the speed," explains Löseke. At 24 m/min, the speed within the goods elevator is also twice as high as that of the 50 m long roller conveyor system, so that there are no waiting times in front of the vertical conveyor. The conveyor system on the upper floor uses an intelligent concept in combination with the vertical conveyor - thanks to the implementation of a second level in the form of a steel structure, the space in the brewery's production hall is optimally utilized. In addition, the roller conveyors provide a buffer space to accommodate up to 50 pallets without production coming to a standstill. On the lower floor, the conveyed goods are transferred from the vertical conveyor back to the roller conveyors, picked up manually by a forklift after a distance of around 25 m and transported to their storage location. If removal is delayed, the pallets can be buffered on the roller conveyors on the upper floor.

A strapping machine is also integrated into the conveyor line on the upper level, which wraps the pallets in film and prepares them for dispatch. As the conveyor system is regularly accessed by employees for maintenance, safety is a top priority. Safety barriers and a safety gate on the vertical conveyor prevent people from entering the shaft. "The safety gate only opens when the safety system is active and a pallet is detected. As soon as people are in this area, the system automatically goes into emergency stop mode," explains Löseke. Although the installation of such a system requires a great deal of time and manpower, HaRo always strives to avoid prolonged production downtime or stoppages at the customer's premises. At the Herford brewery, the existing strapping system had to be integrated into the new system. In order to avoid longer production downtimes, this was only integrated in the final stages of assembly. "Beforehand, we had already carried out all the installation and cabling work for the conveyor system," explains Christoph Hackländer, Managing Director of the HaRo Group. From planning to commissioning of the new system, the conveyor technology manufacturer takes care of all services itself. This not only enables short response times, but customers also benefit from high reliability.

Hall 3, Stand 3D03