Swartberg’s peanuts unloaded with Palletless KOOI® RollerForks

Swartberg Levensmiddelen Fabrieken BV is a medium-sized, family-owned business that specializes in producing nuts and derivative products. For many years now, Swartberg has been operating in the international nut sector and has acquired many leading supermarket chains as satisfied customers both at home and abroad. Using RollerForks®, Swartberg is able to unload containers faster and more economically and still complies with all applicable health and safety requirements.

The quality of the final product is largely dependent on the quality of the ingredients used. Therefore, our purchasing department only uses extremely reliable and reputable Argentinean and Brazilian suppliers for the delivery of the necessary ingredients.

‘Until a couple of years ago, we used to receive peanuts stacked in individual sackcloth bales weighing 50 kg. These bales were virtually impossible to lift. In order to unload containers, we had to use at least two people. Not only was this extremely demanding physical work, but it also took several hours to empty the container. In addition, the 50 kg bales also had to be passed on as part of the production process.

This was far from ideal for our staff because of the heavy physical load this imposed on them. Health and safety directives were clear about this and Swartberg dearly wanted to comply with these requirements. This was why it was decided to have peanuts delivered in bigbags weighing 1,250 kg that could be maneuvered by forklift truck. Bigbags were initially placed on wooden pallets inside the container.

Hygiene requirements, for example HACCP, were also becoming increasingly stringent demanding that pallets be fumigated according to ISPM 15 directives. This was making the use of pallets increasingly expensive and we had to swallow these additional costs,’ explains Dirk Jan Kuiper, Deputy Production Director at Swartberg.

KOOI®-RollerForks are mounted on the fork carriage of the existing lift truck in the same way as regular forks. RollerForks® slide easily underneath  the slip-sheets on which the bigbags are stacked. As soon as the load is positioned squarely on the RollerForks® and these are raised, the rollers drop to allow the load to rest stably on the flat metal surface of the RollerForks®  so that it cannot shift inadvertently. As soon as the forklift truck lowers the RollerForks® to the ground, or onto a pallet, the rollers rise to allow the bigbag to roll off the forks as the truck goes into reverse.

“It’s an amazingly simple system. We had already recovered our costs for the RollerForks® after only four months. Currently, we can unload a 40 ft container in about forty-five minutes, which is three times faster than before.”