The project in Meppel is in its final stage. In October 2013 we started with the task to engineer a complete Masterplan for location Meppel. During 2014 the engineering-phase took place, which resulted in an approved IAR at the beginning of 2015 for what was called phase 1: license to operate IFT.
The objective of the project is:
· Upgrade D2 to IFT standards, meeting FoQus and customer requirements like revised air treatment units, creating overpressure in the dryer building, constructing a nozzle cleaning device at the top of the dryer chamber, walls to separate medium and high care and a new roof on the dryer building;
· Create a new building connecting a warehouse for incoming goods with the main
factory. The new building is called "The Connection" and is adding 1300m2 more space to the factory and it will create space for future zoning of the Food dryers;
· Improve logistic streams in the factory, especially focused on the raw materials for high care production areas. New loading docks and a pallet tumbler for changing from wood to plastic pallets;
· 3 new palletisers, 2 robots and 2 stretchhoods to centralize the palletizing activities in "The Connection".
The different parts of the project had each their own timing based on production stops and interdepencies. The construction parts of the project are now completed. The palletising group is in use for commercial production since June 2016 and is now in its PQ phase. During the 3 years the project has been running about 50.000 project hours were used, more than 1000 contractors were trained on safety in the safety room and fortunately no SHE incidents took place.
The Meppel site has gone through a complete change during the course of the project; driving routes of trucks have been changed, new ways of working have been introduced due to introduction of high care zones and interlocks (PAL/MAL) in the dryer building and a state of the art, centralized palletizing group is installed requiring less manual activities. So a real masterplan project where the site can build on to make further steps.
