The new POWER 3820 balers not only contribute to labor cost savings in the distribution center, but also help secure workspace and improve worker efficiency.
Asahi Foods Co., Ltd. today located in Hidaka City, Japan, was founded close to Tokyo in 1984. It has been a wholesaler of commercial ingredients for over 40 years, serving customers such as the hospitality industry in the Kanto-Koshinetsu region.
Wholesaler of fresh foods
As a wholesaler of fresh foods and frozen/refrigerated ingredients, they play a vital role in the food and beverage industry. Asahi Foods is a company that values connections with local residents and hosts sales events once a month on the premises. Asahi Foods currently has two POWER 3820 balers from Orwak on site at the HQs distribution center. These POWER balers with extra wide loading gate provide impressive volume reduction.
This distribution center sorts ingredients delivered from suppliers across the country and delivers them to business partners on a daily basis. Inside the center, chilled products and frozen foods are sorted on the first floor, which is equipped with a refrigerator and freezer storage, while dry goods, canned goods, and seasonings are sorted on the second floor.
1-1.5 ton cardboard baled per day
The distribution center must dispose of empty cardboard boxes previously containing ingredients. The total volume of cardboard produced is very big and amounts to about 1 to 1.5 tons per day. In the past, 2-3 workers were constantly folding and crushing empty cardboard boxes and transported them frequently to the disposal site.
Two balers keep the entire cardboard stream at bay
In addition, Asahi Foods has installed an automatic sorting machine to promote labor savings, which improved work efficiency and increased the amount of cardboard being discharged. Everything in the waste handling process was done manually until now. To face those challenges, Asahi Foods changed the sorting method and installed the first POWER 3820 unit. It is a big baler and initially there were some concerns about how convenient it would be to operate, but it enables compaction by simply filling it up with a vast amount of cardboard and closing the shutter, which improves work efficiency.
After installing the 3820, it is much less time consuming to handle the cardboard waste. It used to always require the effort from 2-3 employees (even 4-5 at most), but now only 1 worker can keep the piles of cardboard, which Asahi could not master in the past, at bay and still get time to spare for other tasks! In addition, the volume reduction saves workspace. The baler is safe and simple to use and that played a key part when selecting and introducing this model.
In operation 6 days per week
Currently, the baler, in line with the distribution center, is in operation approximately 7 hours a day, 6 days a week. The effect of significantly reducing cardboard processing work was greater than expected, and Asahi Foods soon decided to install a second baler. The first baler compacts cardboard for chilled products and frozen foods on the first floor and the second compacts cardboard for food stored at room temperature on the second floor. They produce about 3-4 bales per day.