Conveyor News

Improving efficiencies

The Knauf plasterboard plant at Immingham places great emphasis on efficient production and quality product, so when a new weighing system achieved significant raw material savings, it made quite an impact.

Since Knauf started manufacturing in the UK 14 years ago, it has invested in excess of £200 million in the most advanced manufacturing technology, making it one of the largest suppliers of gypsum-based building materials in the UK.

Employing more than 16,000 employees in over 100 plants worldwide, it is still a family run business, and still passionate about the quality of its products.

This drive for excellence extends to the way the plants are run. Healthy inter-plant competition is encouraged, and best ideas to maximise efficiency are shared around the group.

Knauf’s plasterboard plant in Immingham, Humberside, is no exception. Over the past 12 years production output has increased year on year and this has been achieved by working with trusted equipment suppliers and re-rating some machinery.

A variety of different gypsum sources are used in the manufacturing process, all of which have very different performance characteristics. This caused problems for the plant’s original impact weigher (also known as a weigh plate) .

‘With the existing equipment we were seeing weighing inaccuracies which were unacceptable in terms of quality and efficiency’ said chief engineer at Immingham, Paul Snowden.

It was at this point that H&H Services took up the challenge. A bespoke supplier of solids handling equipment, they started with a clean sheet, to design and manufacture a weigh belt feeder to dose the gypsum.

The heavy duty feeder they installed features a weigh suspension with no moving parts, which makes it immune to off centre and side loading influences that can cause errors. This lack of moving parts also contributes to greater accuracy, longer life and less maintenance.

In addition, as the equipment is totally enclosed, it is not susceptable to dust build up which also reduces maintenance costs.

The equipment is easy to use, with intuitive graphical touch screens so the engineers and equipment operatives can instantly see the production criteria. This increases the amount of control that operators have over the equipment and further reduces the margin for error.

After a few additional modifications, Knauf estimate the belt feeder has now significantly improved accuracy which prompted the re-evaluation of the plant’s other feeders and control units.

Feeding accuracy is important for cost, and important for quality
Plasterboard is a complex product to produce, with many different dry ingredients added into the mix, not to mention all the wet ingredients.

Given that Knauf makes 14 types of plasterboard, ranging from a basic wallboard to ‘Fire Moistureshield’, an advanced performance plasterboard with a specially formulated core containing silicone additive and vermiculite to offer both fire protection and moisture resistance properties, it’s not hard to see how these elements are key to the properties of the board.

In addition to affecting specific board properties, a number of the additives affect what is known as the ‘setting time’. A key part of plasterboard manufacturing is in ensuing it hardens adequately as it journeys 300m or so down the production line, from the forming station to the shear. This setting time, affected by the ingredients, needs to be as accurate as possible.

‘With our old feeders and their fluctuations in accuracy, we had to be very careful to ensure that there was not a shortfall of key ingredients . With an operation of this size, this was significantly increasing our raw material and transportation costs ,’ said Snowden.

Going for the best option
Whilst HandH Services design and engineer these feeders in-house, they pride themselves on using a range of externally based highly skilled specialist suppliers, to ensure the highest standard of quality for their customer’s projects. It is a viewpoint they apply to their whole business. ‘We form a partnership with our customers, and go all-out to look after them,’ says director Mike Slack. ‘What we try to give our customers is peace of mind that we will be there to support them.’

This is very much in keeping with the Knauf philosophy. ‘Being a family firm, we are fortunate that we can uphold our focus on product quality. We want to be the best in the industry, so we pay to get the best partners to work with us,’ explains Paul Snowden.

‘It’s ironic really,’ says Knauf chief engineer Paul Snowden. ‘Initially, H&H approached me just about level probes – but I could see that they had equipment that could be tailor made exactly to meet our plant’s needs. I’d say we’ve achieved far more than even we set out to achieve.’

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