Alex Andersen Ølund is a logistics company with over 700 trucks that transport goods throughout Europe. A large portion of the fleet consists of specialized refrigerated trucks designed specifically for transporting food and flowers. When flowers are transported by truck, they are placed in special wheeled flower containers. Until February of last year, all of these flower containers were serviced and repaired in Eastern Europe, but that is no longer the case. Alex Andersen Ølund has taken over repairs for the entire Nordic region, and this work is now carried out at the workshop in Odense NV. In just one year, the team has grown from just the day-to-day manager, Morten Jensen, to now 15 employees at the workshop who work on repairing the containers.
Focus on a safe work environment for repetitive lifting
To ensure that work with the containers is carried out in the safest and most ergonomically correct manner, Alex Andersen Ølund has invested in three vacuum lifting systems from Fyns Kran Udstyr. Although the containers weigh “only” about 20 kg each, their size makes them unwieldy, which can lead to poor posture and improper twisting motions during repeated lifting. Employees lift approximately 120 containers per day, so a solution had to be found before work began.
Employee safety is the top priority
“It’s important to us that everyone can handle the physical aspects of the job. You don’t have to be a bodybuilder to do it,” says Kenneth Mostrøm, Packaging Manager at Alex Andersen Ølund. “We’ve never tried doing the work without vacuum lifters; we’ve had them ever since production started here. It was important to us that the work environment was right from the start,” Kenneth Mostrøm continues.
A visit to the showroom and a test of various options
For Kenneth Mostrøm and Morten Jensen, the local aspect was also a factor when they were choosing a vacuum supplier. They loaded a flower container into their car and drove out to test it at Fyns Kran Udstyr’s showroom in Odense, and after they tried the vacuum solution on their own product, the deal was sealed. Various grippers were tested before deciding which one worked best for their needs and product. Kenneth Mostrøm explains: “We’ve been very satisfied with Jesper and Stefan from Fyns Kran Udstyr, as they were proactive and suggested that we might need a new gripper that would suit our needs even better than the one we had. So we had three grapples to test.”
Upgrading to another workstation
At Alex Andersen Ølund, they decided to set up a third workstation using the same vacuum solution as the other two, and it was delivered along with the new grippers. The workshop repairs between 40,000 and 50,000 flower containers per year, with the help of three Jumbo Flex vacuum lifters with a WLL of 35 kg from Schmalz. All three are mounted on aluminum jib cranes from Schmalz, which, thanks to their low weight, make it easier to maneuver the vacuum lifters over to the containers that need to be lifted.
Would you like to learn more about the solutions we’ve supplied to Alex Andersen Ølund?
