Customer Requirements
Tetley GB Ltd. is a subsidiary of Tata Tea, one of India’s best know tea brands and one of the largest processors in the worldwide tea market.
Tetley is also one of Britain’s favorite cups of tea. Their entire range of teas are blended and packed at their Eaglescliffe, Teeside plant in the U.K. where output is running at 50 million tea bags a week.
1) Tetley decided to improve the efficiency of their Decaffeinated Tea handling facility by having tea delivered in 1,100lb/ 500kg bulk bags instead of in 55lb/ 25kg sacks.
2) For transportation efficiency, the bulk bags are delivered to the plant stacked two high on a single pallet.
3) An average of 11 bags need to be emptied daily at the plant that operates 24 hours, 5 days a week.
Spiroflow Solution
Even though forklift trucks are used to deliver the loaded pallets to the unloader, we supplied a Type 6 Bulk Bag Unloader that comes complete with its own bag hoisting system.
– The loops of the upper bags are attached to a lifting frame and the bag can be hoisted up, traversed across and then lowered in position on the unloader, leaving the lift truck free for other tasks.
– Once the first bag is unloaded and returned to the ground, the second bag can be installed.
– To ensure the dust-free transfer of tea, the T6 Unloader is furnished with a containment cabinet in which the neck of the bulk bag can be untied, after it has been restricted by a pair of pneumatically powered pinch closure bars.
– With the interlocked dust cabinet access door closed, the spout closure bars can be opened to allow flow to commence from the bag, through the central feed spout of the docking connection into the container below.
– Both the dust cabinet and the docking device are connected to the plant’s central dust collection system.
– This prevents any dust from escaping into the atmosphere during filling of the rigid containers or each time the hopper doors are opened to untie or re-tie the neck of the bulk bag.
– The Spiroflow Type 6 Unloader incorporates a pneumatically-operated telescopic docking connection that makes a dust-tight connection with the inlet of the container below.
– An easily removable magnet is fitted above the docking system to trap any foreign metal that may have become mingled with tea at the point of origin.
