Automated Plate Freezing Project

The Challenge: Cool Off, the pet food raw material manufacturing division of Staughton Group approached us with the challenge to automate their plate freezing process for more efficient pet food production. We needed to work with them to design new innovative technology to help them meet the ever-increasing consumer demand for their product.

To complement Cool Off’s unique offal collection and plate freezing process, they were looking for a solution to reduce the labour-intensive unloading and palletisation process which required extensive manual handling by operators.

The Solution

To increase output and limit manual handling requirements, together with Cool Off we designed an automated plate freezing process, eliminating the requirement for manual handling.

To meet ever-increasing demand, Cool Off carried out a number of construction tasks at the plant that consisted of constructing additional freezer units to accomodate the larger sized plates, which we worked together to establish a system of pneumatically actuated panels and built a conveyor belt to rapidly withdraw plates from a larger block of freezers.

The result from this led to a 120% increase in freezing capacity and output, as well as significant improvements in safety and productivity through the omission of the necessity for manual handling of freezer plates.

The development of this patented automated plate freezing system, combined with the abattoir chilling system, has given the Cool Off production team a competitive advantage in quality and processing efficiency. The technology that accompanies this system has helped establish our business as a pioneering innovator for problem-solving in various industries.