Ribble completes £3.5m investment project

Ribble recently completed a £3.5m investment project on time, despite the challenges presented by Covid-19. The project, which began in February, included an 18,000 sq ft warehouse extension and the installation of various state-of-the-art machinery, concluded in early September. The investment will allow Ribble to expand their capacity and continue its growth in the future.

The investment consisted of four projects involving a multitude of contractors from all over Europe, working seamlessly together in an environment made all the more challenging by the requirement to comply with a comprehensive Covid risk management plan.

The ‘Airbond’ system, installed by JKSP Services, was an investment on the drying section of the conventional corrugator. It is designed to dry doublewall board at higher running speeds, ultimately increasing the line speed of double wall from 170m per min up to 220m per min.

The largest part of the of the investment was the Unifold, the latest generation and fastest fully automated fanfold stacker in Europe. This machine was manufactured by Universal Corrugated B.V, shipped over from the Netherlands and installed and commissioned within a 2 week period. The upgrade will allow Ribble to increase running speed by 33% from 150m per min to 200m per min, with the capability for higher speeds in the future.

The press track, dedicated to The Unifold stacker, incorporates a state-of-the-art palletiser, turntable, pallet pusher and conveyorisation. All of which will aid the manufacture and delivery of Fanfold to the various Right Size automated packaging systems available across the market.

The warehouse extension has increased the onsite storage capacity by 18,000 sq ft, allowing them to store on average an extra 1,000 pallets and cope with the newly increased running speeds of the fanfold stacker.

Stephen Rector, Managing Director of Ribble Packaging, praised his employees and the contractors involved stating, “The work done on this project has been immense and the result is, in my opinion, fantastic. The Fanfold and Right Size packaging market has grown significantly over the past few years and show no signs of stopping. We therefore needed to evolve with the market to protect our hard-earned market leading position. This investment will ensure we do exactly that while also giving us the ability to strengthen our relationships and partnerships with the leading Right Size packaging machine manufacturers such as Panotec, Quadient and CMC.”

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