Packerland
Packing, a division of Smithfield Foods, was
using off-site warehousing and blast freezing
along with manual sortation, so they decided
to build a new distribution facility of their
own hoping to save labor cost and improve
product safety. The best site available was
property they already owned, a greenfield
site approximately 600 feet away. The only
problem was an active railroad line running
between their processing plant and that site.
Having recently completed a similar project
for another Smithfield company, Tippmann Group
knew exactly what needed to be done. Tippmann
designed a distribution center that is attached
to the plant by a conveyor tunnel that goes
up and over the railroad tracks. The new facility
also has its own blast freezers.
The conveyor tunnel was designed to feed directly
into an automated sortation/palletizing system
with a manual stack-off for slow-moving items.
With the distribution center site essentially
a separate facility, product safety is enhanced.
Outbound shipping trucks have their own dedicated
entrance, so there is no crossover between
the incoming livestock and the outgoing finished
product. This separation of the distribution
and the processing helps maximize the ability
to keep the product safe.
