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Cold store Lau van Haren loads their containers in a fast way
without any damage with three RollerForks®. Because there is
no more expensive manual work and no packaging, the palletless
system easily pays back the costs in only half a year.
It is cold in the cold storage depot at Lau van Haren Logistics & Coldstores BV in Weurt.
There is a maximum temperature of only two degrees at the forwarding department and
that can be rather chilly when you stay there for a long time. It can also be worse; behind
the isolated sliding doors there is a constant minimum temperature of minus twenty
degrees. In the special freezers temperatures drop to minus thirty-two degrees. It shows
when a pallet with meat is just brought into the forwarding department. You can feel the
cold as the pallet goes by. Apart from that, the load also looks a bit strange. The layers
containing white boxes are separated with the so-called airflow spacers. With these air-
flow spacers extra airspace is created between the layers. “In this way a load is frozen
completely, also the inner part of a load,” explains managing director Wieck van Haren
while he closes his jacket once more. “The client supplies the pallet in this way. After
freezing it we remove the spacers by overturning the pallet 90 degrees. The receiver
does not have any use for the spacers and sending the spacers only results in extra costs.
Mr. Wieck van Haren : “ The first container, I still remember
We also need the spacers here.” it well. We started at 7 o’clock and before we knew it, it was
loaded and ready for transport. Without using pallets.”
Costs are an important issue
Preventing extra costs is an important issue within deep-freeze logistics. The conditioned
space for storage and transport is expensive and therefore it has to be used optimally.
This is the case during storage but also during transport. Especially when it concerns long-
distance transport as for instance cooled sea containers. “It is because of this that we
prefer to work without extra expenses like for instance pallets and slip-sheets,” says
Van Haren. “A pallet takes up a lot of extra space and costs, 5 minimally. A slip-sheet uses
less space but still costs 1. Manual handling is also possible, but this will increase labour
costs with an amount of 10 to 15 per ton. We do not need that. Especially when we are talk-
ing about a lot of containers.”
A single unit a week was no problem for Van Haren, it could be done manually. In 2002,
a new client who supplied Van Haren with tons of extra containers a week made them
choose for another solution. Seeing that pallets were overturned to remove the airflow
spacers, Van Haren came up with a solution for loading and unloading of containers
without the use of pallets. By replacing the artificial slaughterhouse pallet for a pallet
with a couple of extra supporting laths it would be possible to place the boxes directly
on the forks. An extra third arm in the middle could support a load. Now the only problem
was how to remove the boxes from the forks.