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My Verbruggen

  • Case

    Luisetti Seeds: Stacking Smarter
    with Verbruggen

Decoratief element

Founded in 1932, Luisetti Seeds is a family-owned business operating over two
sites on the Canterbury plains of New Zealand: with its head office in Rangiora and a
main seed-cleaning facility in Ashburton.. Specializing in ryegrass — which makes up
about half of its annual cleaning volume by weight — the company needed a
palletizing solution that could handle bulky products, different bag sizes, and high
throughput. “We’d looked at robotic claw arms in the past, but we found that humans
could stack ryegrass better,” says Operations Manager Mark Frampton. “When we
saw the Verbruggen and its five-sided compaction mechanism in action, we quickly
realized it could stack much better than a human — and do it faster.” The decision to
invest in a VPM-8 came after installing the largest cleaning line for ryegrass seed in
the Southern Hemisphere, which shifted the bottleneck from cleaning to packing.

Luisetti Seeds

Efficiency, flexibility, and game-changing results

The VPM-8 handles three pallet sizes and multiple bag types, with recipes that make
change overs as simple as “push a button, and off we go,” Mark explains. While the
machine can handle up to 19 bags per minute, its current rates of 4–5 bags per
minute alone have been transformative for operations. Two operators can now run
five metric tons an hour comfortably, all day.
The perfect, square stacks have also improved container loading efficiency — saving
20 pallets per 40-foot container and halving load times.
The efficiency gained by the palletiser has allowed for a change in system, increasing
warehouse storage capacity by about a third. “It’s been an absolute game changer
for us,” Mark says. “It’s opened up new ways of working, like packing just before
shipment, so that the product is always in top condition.”

Luisetti Seeds

Reliable performance and lasting value

Since installation, downtime has been minimal, and the machine has proven stable
and easy to operate. “It turns up every day and punches out the seed,” Mark notes.
Even Luisetti’s customers have noticed the improvement in stacking quality: “We’ve
had photos sent from the other side of the world showing pallets looking exactly as
they did when they left here — even after 60 days at sea.” Beyond the clear ROI, the
Verbruggen has brought significant extra benefits in terms of efficiency, storage,
shipping, and labor savings. Mark has no reservations about recommending it: “It’s
totally fit for purpose for what we need it to do. I’d highly recommend it to anyone
stacking products particularly ryegrass — it really has changed the way we operate.”

Other cases

PGG Wrightson Seeds: Automation
that Transforms Operations

PGG Wrightson Seeds is New Zealand’s largest seed producer, supplying a diverse portfolio of grasses, vegetable seeds, forage brassica’s and peas. Each year, its South Island sites process a significant tonnage of seed, with Ashburton handling the bulk of the cleaning and packing. Until recently, palletizing was a labor-intensive job, done by hand — increasingly challenging as staff aged and workplace injuries became more common. “It was our first serious step into automation,” says Operations Manager Jason Fran...

Lion Foods

Lion Foods, a subsidiary of TOP The Onion Group, produces crispy baked onions for popular brands and private labels, accounting for 80% of crispy onion sales to Dutch supermarkets. The company used to stack everything manually, but now has five Verbruggen palletizing machines delivering neat, stable stacking results. The fleet will soon include three more at another site. “When I first arrived in 2010, everything was stacked manually,” says in-company training provider Marc van der Weele.

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