Roche Fruit Maximizes Belt Life and Minimizes Downtime with S2400 Radius HDE
Case StudyRoche Fruit
Products
Modular Plastic Belting
Industries
Fruit and Vegetable
Solutions
Intralox FoodSafe
Customer Objectives
Radius belting issues caused frequent unplanned downtime at Roche Fruit’s Yakima, Washington, plant. Conveyor belts on the bagger infeed and before and after manual apple inspection experienced rod migration, and edge breakages caused entire belt sections to fail. Because many conveyors shared a drive shaft, addressing one belt breakdown would shut down an entire section of the line. Apart from the extra maintenance to get back up and running, staff also added daily belt inspections to mitigate the breakdowns.
Intralox Execution
Roche sought Intralox’s help, having successfully used our Dual-Stacked Angled Roller Belt (DARB) technology in their packaging area. For the radius application, Intralox experts recommended Series 2400 radius belting with Heavy-Duty Edge (HDE). Its optimized, fault-tolerant edge design helps mitigate edge damage and breakage from misuse, catchpoints, and incorrect orientation. Plus, its patented Load-Sharing edge extends belt life by reducing stress in critical areas. Roche Fruit trialed the solution on one conveyor for approximately 12 months without any issues. After a full season of problem-free performance, they decided to retrofit the rest of the facility.
Results
As our experts expected, S2400 radius HDE belting completely eliminated the frequent rod migration and belt breakage issues. The Intralox solution extended Roche’s belt and component life while minimizing their planned and unplanned downtime. Roche has retrofitted 11 conveyors with S2400 radius HDE belting throughout their Yakima plant.
Intralox’s radius belting has reduced our very expensive and unplanned downtime. The Series 2400 HDE belts have added a layer of confidence to the conveyance system and to our overall production schedule and consistent performance.
Al Pineda
General Manager at Roche Fruit
