Blendcor. Excellence protected by SMI cases
In South Africa, if you stop at any Shell or BP garage to buy engine oil or lubricant, you will find Blendcor products, an excellence in the petrochemical industry.
The petrochemical sector is particularly demanding and requires precise and safe packaging in the packaging process of jerrycans, drums, oil cans and lubricants, especially in the presence of flammable materials.
Focused on automotive, mining and energy-related products, Blendcor believes in the achievement of excellence through customer satisfaction, innovation and team working; furthermore, as an operating unit of Shell and BP, two of the largest oil companies in the world, Blendcor is obliged to comply with international standards for the achievement of the highest quality of the products.
Excellence and sustainability
Located on the coast of the Indian Ocean, 350 miles southeast of Johannesburg, in one of the most beautiful stretches of South Africa, Durban, the country’s third largest city and the flagship of KwaZulu-Natal, is a tropical urban jewel.
It is a powerful and vibrant cocktail of contrasts: a surfer’s paradise with fantastic spots to ride the waves, a centre for import/export in southern Africa and a major port city with the largest sugar terminal in the world, as well as being a centre of excellence. In Durban, excellence is a way of life, teamwork and continuous innovation to achieve a single goal: customer satisfaction! This is the main concern of Blendcor (Pty) Ltd, a company at the forefront of the production of lubricants, oils and greases, which operates at Island View in the city’s port, a strategic area for trade and economy in South Africa.
In this area of great industrial importance, Blendcor’s production facilities make use of the latest generation technologies to achieve maximum efficiency and quality. Among these, the solutions provided by SMI to the South African company for the secondary packaging of 5 L jerry cans of lubricating oil in wrap-around boxes stand out.
Blendcor has recently installed a case packer of the LWP ERGON series with a DV 500 ERGON divider/channeler and conveyor belts, to which will soon be added a new line supplied by SMI for the packaging of 0.5 L and 1 L HDPE shaped bottles in wrap-around cardboard boxes.
SMI solutions for Blendcor
The need to increase productivity and ensure efficiency and quality within the packaging lines of rectangular 5L PVC jerry cans containing lubricating oil, led Blendcor to invest in the purchase of new wrap-around case packers with advanced technological content.
SMI, thanks to the support of its local partner Caltech Agencies, provided the customer with a functional and competitive packaging solution, consisting of a DV 500 series divider, an LWP 30 ERGON wrap-around case packer and conveyor belts serving the two machines.
To monitor and improve the production efficiency of the plant, SMI also provided a dedicated software that manages the communications between the DV 500 divider, the weight controller and product evacuation system installed upstream of the divider. Thanks to this management, the lubricant jerry cans that do not fall within the weight parameters defined by the South African company are automatically conveyed to a third row of belts, so that the operator can subsequently pick them up and reject them, to avoid them being packed in cardboard boxes. The jerry cans that have the correct weight are distributed on the two rows of conveyor belts at the infeed of the LWP 30 ERGON case packer, to be packed in wrap-around cardboard boxes in a 2×2 format.
LWP 30 ERGON wrap-around case packer
• Packaging solution suitable for the protection of lubricants in 5 L jerrycans
• Packs several types of containers, both cylindrical and shaped
• Wrap-around cardboard boxes are resistant to impacts and preserve the product integrity and quality
• The cases realized with the wrap-around system are more stable
• Versatile, efficient solution, with a great quality/price ratio
DV 500 S ERGON divider – laner
• Compact and flexible system for dividing containers into more rows and laning them towards the wrap-around case packer
• Continuous-motion divider, that ensures a smooth and constant packaging process
• The model supplied to Blendcor has an optional software for communication with the weight and evacuation system installed upstream of the divider
Conveyor belts
• Smooth and constant handling of containers entering the LWP
• Use of high-quality components and wear-resistant materials, that reduce friction and noise, thus preserving the quality of the transported packs
• High reliability of the system, thanks to AISI 304 stainless steel structure and components
• Simplified maintenance operations
The role of partners
Blendcor attributes a key role to all partners who, by working with the company to maintain high quality and safety standards, contribute to its economic development, the creation of the value chain and market competitiveness.
The collaboration with SMI is part of this context and contributes to the achievement of Blendcor’s objectives. Thanks to SMI’s long experience in the field of packaging and the supply of state-of-the-art machines, the Durban-based company ensures the appropriate packaging to preserve the quality of its products and their competitiveness on the market.
The first collaboration between Blendcor and SMI dates back to 1997 with the supply of a shrinkwrapper of the APET series for the packaging of 0.5 L steel cans in the 5×2 film only format and an AF 432 B model shrinkwrapper for the subsequent “repacking” in 4×4 film only formats.
Over the years the collaboration has been consolidated and in 2002 SMI supplied a WP 300 XL wrap-aournd case packer, a DV 200 divider/channeler and conveyor belts to process 3 different types of 5 litre HDPE jerry cans in wrap-around cardboard boxes in the 1×3 and 1×4 format.
The solutions adopted by SMI for Industry 5.0
SMI manufactures fully automated and ergonomic systems for primary, secondary and tertiary packaging, user-friendly and able to interconnect in digital networks. This makes it possible to increase the flexibility and efficiency of production, as well as an accurate control of the consumption of the machines, fully meeting the current criteria of Industry 4.0 and the new ones of Industry 5.0. Thanks to the digital intelligence with which they are equipped, the latest generation of SMI machines can benefit from the SMYIOT platform, which has the task of collecting all the operating and life cycle data of the same, allowing them to be verified, processed and enhanced. The HMI of SMI plants is another element of Industry 5.0 that aims to simplify human-machine collaboration. From the control panel, the operator can select various “dashboards” that facilitate the management and maintenance of the machine, allow the selection of processing parameters and provide the user with guided and interactive procedures.
