Survival of the Fittest

22 February 2017


Pelloby supplied a bespoke two-tonne crane to Ricoh’s toner bottle production line in Telford, UK.

Ricoh UK Products, a production subsidiary of Japan’s Ricoh Company, manufactures a range of products from across Ricoh’s portfolio at its Telford premises. In 2014 the company launched an initiative to restructure the company’s European manufacturing procedures and move towards lean manufacturing—titled Project Darwin.

Production of the toner itself was moved to France, and in the resultant space at Telford, Ricoh established two operations—one for toner bottle production, and one for toner colour filling.

Up to 40,000 bottles are manufactured each day and transported to the toner colour filling operations in the adjacent room. To complete tool changes on the four bottle production machines, and for ad hoc maintenance tasks covering inspection and repair work, Ricoh installed a 16.8m-span, twotonne crane built to specification by Pelloby.

The crane manufacturer also supplied a 28m-long full supporting gantry for the crane to run on, built to a height of almost 6m to provide 6.7m of lift and to straddle the four tall bottle production machines.

The single-girder beam was fitted with a Verlinde VT1 wire rope hoist and a divorced pendant control to operate the long travel, hoist travel and vertical hoisting motions.

Graham Smith, area specialist maintenance engineer at Ricoh, said: “Large cranes like this one that span the width of a warehouse or factory and travel the length of it are often designed and installed at the same time as the space is being built—they’re factored into the plan for the building.

“This wasn’t the case with this crane, but Pelloby were able to design a crane that met the evolving needs of our business perfectly.