Dry pet food manufacturer, GA Pet Food Partners, has received 19,750 plastic pallet boxes courtesy of Goplasticpallets.com for its new automated production facility.
GA approached Goplasticpallets.com looking for a large container that would work seamlessly in a fully automated system and could handle the company’s specific batch customer requirements ranging from three to 200 tonnes whilst handling many different ingredients.
The use of containers within the new automated system would allow GA to cut overheads to operate a leaner business and speed up the production process.
GA ordered 19,750 of the plastic pallet boxes in three different colours; 14,000 in blue for storing finished cooked material, 5,000 in red for storing raw materials and 750 in green for other internal use. Together the boxes offer a storage capacity of 27.65 million litres.
During production each box was fitted with a writable RFID tag to record the source of the ingredients and the batch date of the pet food within the container, which would provide GA’s customers with full traceability of all raw ingredients.
The admin team at Goplasticpallets.com managed the project for GA both coordinating production with CABKA_IPS, the manufacturer in Belgium, and organising delivery schedules with LKW WALTER, its transport organisation for the Europe-wide full truck loads.
It was a large-scale logistics operation which started in November 2017 and finished the first week in June, which saw all 19,750 plastic pallet boxes and lids transported by 13.6m articulated trucks – more than 470 individual loads – from the manufacturing plant in Ieper in Belgium to GA’s distribution centre in Chorley in Lancashire.
Jim Whittingham, operations director for GA Pet Food Partners, said: “I’m delighted with the service we’ve received from Ben and the team at Goplasticpallets.com. From my initial enquiry, right through to our final delivery they’ve been extremely helpful and attentive – keeping us updated on the status of our deliveries.”
Ben Messingham, UK sales manager for Goplasticpallets.com, said: “This is a really exciting project to be involved with and over the coming months we look forward to seeing how the plastic pallet boxes have enhanced GA’s new automated facility.”
