The Visser palletiser is a hard-working entry-level palletiser for small to medium-sized packers with throughputs up to 10 tonnes an hour. David Harrison has sold more than 50 in the UK. Mervyn and Richard’s Toll grow around 45 acres of potatoes on prime Fenland silt at Sutton Bridge producing around 1000 tonnes of potatoes annually. They installed a Visser palletiser to increase throughput and, more importantly, to save their aching backs!
Palletisers have become recognised as a major contribution to labour saving in vegetable handling operations. They have gained additional popularity as trailer manufacturers increased the payload capacity of their curtain-siders and container wagons while the Health and Safety Executive restricted manual stacking to shoulder height.
So while a trailer may now take stacks of potato bags up to 10 or 13 layers high, manual operations are restricted to eight.
Visser machines are designed with easy to use controls allowing the operator to adjust the machine to suit individual applications, without the need of a service engineer.
Toll’s palletiser has introduced the flexibility to respond to orders. Before it could take 48 hours to recruit temporary staff and then they would expect a minimum of a week’s employment, both impacting on service and cost-efficiency.