The new building took nearly a year to plan and erect and Total was consulting at the site over that time period. “The previous plant was at Dun Laoghaire, some seven miles south of Dublin,” says Ian O’Toole, project manager for Cadbury.
“It was originally an Adams site and was taken over by Cadbury when Cadbury Schweppes bought Adams in 2002.
“The original Adams site is about thirty years old. This new site at Tallaght will bring the manufacturing and storage facility up to date with the latest technology. Production will be nearly fully automated and the warehouse will work with an SAP system, whereby every pallet is bar-coded and will have its own specific place in the racking. The new system will instruct drivers of the forklifts and order pickers exactly where the pallets should be placed.”
Two Still R 60-20 compact electric counterbalance forklift trucks are used in the goods-in and goods-out areas. Rossa Farrell, production team leader for Cadbury, says: “We needed a reliable truck with sufficient capacity and short enough wheelbase to use inside the lorry containers and on the dock levellers. The Still R 60 Compact is the ideal truck as it has the same capacity as larger trucks but with smaller overall dimensions.”
The two R 60-20 compacts also feed the production area with raw materials, working in conjunction with the EXU low lift powered pallet truck. The EXU is a new model and can be operated easily without any special knowledge. Energy saving features such as the optimised shunt wound drive unit and end of stroke shut off which automatically stops the pump, result in an unusually high turn-round of loads on a single battery charge.
“The production at this plant is nearly fully automated. Production is carried out over several levels and the raw materials are transported up to the top level first. The production line uses gravity to feed the materials along the different stages (and thus different levels in the factory) of production,” says Farrell.
The Cadbury plant has a total of 1,000 pallet spaces. A quarter of this space is used for storing raw materials with the remainder being used to store product ready for shipping. Once the gum base pellets have been produced, the product is put into stock using the two MX-X VNA order pickers, pending shipping to other Cadbury plants for processing into finished product.
Each truck is configured to suit the individual application. In this instance, the trucks are configured to lift up to one tonne to just over nine metres, though the MX-X can be configured to lift loads to over 15 metres. The Optispeed control system takes into account the lift height, travel speed and travel direction to provide the optimum working speed.
“We are very pleased with the Still product and the level of service we have received from Total,” says O’Toole. “Prior to signing the contract, they allowed me to visit a number of their existing customers to experience first hand the product in operation.”