Case study

Ensuring power availability during seasonal peaks

15.02.2021
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Ensuring power availability during seasonal peaks - Monday, 15.02.2021

1 | Challenge:

Ensuring power availability to the material handling fleet during seasonal peaks.

 

After benefiting from HOPPECKE’s innovative solutions for more than 5 years, a leading European supplier of Bananas has chosen HOPPECKE to continue to meet their challenge of ensuring energy availability for their material handling fleet during peak times in their business.

As with many companies, seasonal demand can put a strain on the material handling fleet, and ensuring the fleet has the energy needed can be challenging. In operations whereby battery changing during the working shift is necessary, a system which allows for easy, quick and safe battery changing, is a must.

The SH Pratt Group, one of Europe’s leading fruit importers who has specialised in the ripening and distribution of bananas and pineapples for more than 5 decades, approached HOPPECKE with such a challenge.

With a material handling fleet consisting of Electric Counterbalance trucks, Low Level Order Pickers and Powered Pallet Trucks aiding in the distribution of more than 2,000 pallets per day, SH Pratt needed to ensure that they had available the motive power energy they needed for their busy operation, particularly during seasonal peaks.

 

2 | Solution:

An efficient battery changing system combined with a battery fleet management system.

 

In order to meet the energy demands of the material handling fleet during peak periods, an efficient means of battery changing was needed, as well as the need to monitor the battery fleet to ensure its optimization.

To provide a fast and safe means of battery changing, a trak | xchange PU system for 48v batteries and changing system trak | xchange TU for 24v batteries, was chosen. Both battery changing systems remove the need to utilize a forklift truck or crane to remove and replace the battery from the truck, thereby increasing operator safety and reducing the time taken to exchange batteries. This increased efficiency significantly helps to meet the increased demand during peak periods. trak | uplift air batteries fitted with trak | collect battery monitoring devices not only give each battery an individual identity but also monitor battery temperature and electrolyte levels.  When the batteries are connected to the chargers the information form the trak | collect is transferred to the trak |  charger HF premium. The charger then looks at all charging history and battery capacity usage along with any battery or charger faults and sends this information to the trak | monitor battery management system.

The trak | monitor battery management system can be set to report any preselected data items and send these by text or e-mail to an allocated manager either at SH Pratt Group, JST Lift Trucks, the HOPPECKE central service desk or all three. Also available are full operational and management reports which can be accessed and monitored at any time via an internet connection.

With an efficient means of battery changing and real time notification of important battery data, in place, the team at SH Pratt can continue to dedicate their resources on their core business and are able to meet with confidence the demands of seasonal peaks.

 

3 | Products:

 

  • Batteries: trak | uplift
  • Charger: trak | charger HF premium
  • Battery controller: trak | collect
  • Battery management system: trak | monitor 4.0
  • Battery changing system: trak | xchange PU and TU

 

Every year the demand from our customers for bananas increases by up to 50% which puts a huge strain on the power availability from our material handling batteries. Having experienced this shortage and the pressures it puts on the business over many years I believed that the answer to this was through organisation and management. This is why we invested in the HOPPECKE trak | monitor and management systems in both our charging areas”. SIMON BIANCHI, Head of Operations SH Pratt Bananas