Birds Eye

Birds Eye Iglo Group is a UK based producer of frozen foods such as vegetables, fish and meat. The products of the company - that was founded in 1938 - are sold throughout Western Europe and is one of the leading companies in the frozen foods business in this area. Ancra equipped eight Lamberet trailers with robust automatic truck loading systems for transport of deep-frozen products (-18º Celsius) from the production facility in Lowestoft to the cold store in Wisbech (UK).

One of the main reasons for choosing to automatically Load/unload the trailers was that this has a substantial advantage regarding damage prevention. At the facility in Lowestoft the trailers are loaded stand alone by fork-lift trucks. These fork-lift trucks do not have to drive through the trailer because of the index loading capability of the chain conveyor system. This decreases the risk of damage to the fragile walls of the trailer. Furthermore it improves loading time efficiency. The trailers are operated stand alone at the factory in Lowestoft, but link up to the stationary automatic truck loading systems that Ancra have installed at the cold store in Wisbech.

The six chain tracks mounted in the trailer floor can be pneumatically lifted or lowered, enabling the use of hand pallet trucks when needed. The automatic loading/unloading system can deal with mixed pallet types. A docking roller unit is mounted at the rear of each chassis. This roller unit guides into a positioning frame installed in front of the stationary dock in Wisbech, to align the trailer correctly. This enables fluent automatic unloading of the truck at the cold store. The delivery of Ancra’s chain conveyor system for this shuttle shows that our systems are extremely useful for the prevention of damage, next to the efficient improvements they can bring.