GA PET FOOD PARTNERS RELIES ON SPECIALIST TRIO TO ENSURE GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION
One of the UK’s leading producers and suppliers of quality pet food, GA Pet Food Partners (GA), has joined forces with specialist fast-action door suppliers and an automated vehicle manufacturer to meet a growing demand from customers around the world.
Established in 1992, GA has revolutionised the pet food industry with a unique range of dry products that incorporates totally fresh ingredients including meat, vegetables, herbs and botanicals. The company employs over 700 colleagues at its production site and two 200,000 sq ft distribution centres in Lancashire. GA continues to grow and now produces in excess of 800,000 tonnes of pet food each year which is exported to more than 50 countries across the world.
GA relies upon a fleet of automated vehicles, known affectionately as camels, to safely transport dry ingredients between production, packaging and distribution areas within the company’s site. Designed, manufactured and installed by JBT Automated Systems, the camels feature Dynaco fast-action all-weather doors to simplify all loading and unloading operations. A total of 12 doors from the popular FlexiEdge range were supplied and installed by Stertil door products.
FlexiEdge fast-action doors have been designed to set new standards of safety. The door curtain is fully flexible with a soft bottom edge which not only self-adjusts to seal on an uneven floor but also avoids any possibility of causing injury to users. In addition, the incorporation of an infra-red photocell, supported by a bottom edge wireless detector, ensures instant halting of all door movement in the event of sensing an obstruction of any kind.
The door curtains, which have been developed to offer flexibility and durability, incorporate no rigid elements. A hi-tech manufacturing process involves the insertion of reinforced polyester within a PVC sandwich to produce a high strength yet lightweight door curtain. These curtains are available in a wide range of standard RAL colours and various style options that include vision panels and windows, translucent curtains, insulated versions for chiller/freezer applications and fly screen curtains. Many of these may also be specified to incorporate company names, logos and other types of corporate branding.
A wide range of activation systems allows maximum versatility of FlexiEdge doors in many different applications. Alternatives to the standard push button pads include wired and wireless pull cords, key switches, induction loops, photocells, radar, radio or infra-red transmitters, presence detectors and touchless hand-wave detectors.
Fast opening and closing of the FlexiEdge doors enables the uninterrupted movement of the automated vehicles that transport dry ingredients from the kitchen to the production site where the ingredients are mixed with fresh meat and oils. The final stage of the operation involves the use of the automated vehicles to deliver packaged and palletised consignments of finished products to the distribution centres for collection by road transport.
“Working alongside our own trusted partners - Dynaco and JBT Automated Systems - we were able to provide an efficient and effective solution for GA Pet Food Partners,” says Andy Georgiou, General Manager of Stertil Door Products. “By ensuring the safe and rapid movement of ingredients and finished product, our three companies have helped to meet the nutritional needs of cats, dogs and other small animals throughout the world.”
