Panmure Orchards

Cherry & Nectarine Packhouse: "Got it Right, Working Incredibly Well"

Project Description

THE CLIENT NEED

Panmure Orchards, which produces cherries and nectarines, wanted to improve their packhouse safety and efficiency. There were two people catching and packing cherry punnets as they came off the conveyor at irregular timing. They had to be ‘standing by’ all the time, but were not fully utilised most of the day.

Shirley Hiscock, co-owner, sought a rotating table to catch and hold the punnets to solve that problem. Her Google search led to Dyno, and she tells us what transpired…

THE DYNO EXPERIENCE IN THE CLIENT’S WORDS

The First Step – Worked Incredibly Well

“We were already into production season, and I contacted Dyno to see if they could provide us with a rotating table at short notice – to be installed by ourselves.

They delivered it to us over the holiday season and it worked incredibly well. We then only needed one person to pick up the punnets from the table and pack them at a steady pace, removing the pressure and stress they had previously. This meant we could redeploy the other person to more productive tasks.”

On a Roll…

“With this pleasing improvement in production, we then asked Dyno to revamp our Nectarine production line. We’d had a few safety issues such as hooks near the rollers and bits sticking out from the roller stands to catch peoples’ feet and cause tripping.”

Covered All the Bases to Get Things Right

“When we told them our needs, they asked all the right questions to cover things we forgot to specify, such as left or right-side weighing.

They figured everything out and provided a reliable quality solution – within a month. We got wider rollers, with powered and xpandaroll’s the same width to avoid pinch points. Both sides of the grader line then had matching size to improve safety.

They checked that we had all the relevant information to do the wiring and installation ourselves properly, including the right-sized motors etc.”

THE OUTCOME

“Things are humming along smoothly now, and we can pull-out or put-away the conveyor as required – avoiding the previous heavy lifting of rollers.

We’ve also got less people movement up-and-down the packhouse – making production tidier and safer.

Dyno has been very good to work with and nothing is a problem for them. They really made sure that the whole system worked for us from concept to completion.

Their agile response is amazing in such short timeframes.

All in all, we’ve improved our efficiency while removing our worst safety issues.”