For over 70 years, the Cockerill family has been plying its trade in potatoes – Britain’s favourite vegetable – and the company is still family owned and run. It was established by Ronald Cockerill in the bleak days of the depression of the 1930s. His son Martin, the current Managing Director, and grandson Sam provide the second and third generations of the Cockerill family involved in the business.
Things have moved on since Ronald’s day, and the company currently supplies potatoes for both retail and processing. It has 80 full-time employees, a large fleet of delivery vehicles, its own agronomists, and works with a number of growers as well as farming its own 1500 acres. This enables the business to supply over 100,000 tonnes of potatoes per annum to the crisping industry, manage a seed production group for crisping varieties, and operate a 24/7 prepack business serving retail multiples and large wholesalers on a Just-in-Time [JIT] supply basis with over 1,200 tonnes of potatoes per week.
The prepack business has seen a significant growth over the last three years, with a £3m extension to the pack house at Dunnington, just outside the city of York, facilitating a 50% increase in turnover. It is in the pack house that the company uses Aetna shrink wrapping machines.
In 2011 the well-used pallet wrapper that Cockerill’s used to bind together a number of pallets and boxes, failed. As spare parts were not immediately available, this could have been disastrous; perishable produce, if left, will do just that! “Fortunately, I had recently read about Aetna packaging equipment, and had spoken to someone who used their machines and who was very pleased with the performance of both the equipment and the company,” said Cockerill Operations Manager David Elvidge. “I contacted the company immediately, and they couldn’t have been more helpful.
“Having explained the situation, they installed and programmed a ROBOPAC 507 turntable pallet wrapper for us in only 3 days. Their speed and efficiency averted what could have been a costly situation.”
Aetna UK, based in Bedford, is well-known in this country, having been established here for over 20 years, during which time it has built up a reputation as a market leader in the production of automatic stretch and shrink pallet wrappers. The company’s origins are in Italy, where it has a number of manufacturing sites. Aetna has just about got the wrapping business wrapped up, producing a variety of vertical and horizontal stretch wrapping machines, manual, semi-automatic and automatic shrink wrapping machines and five taping and case erector machines.
David Elvidge continued: “I was so impressed with the first machine, and with the service we received from Aetna in our time of trouble, that when we decided to invest in a second pallet wrapper, I didn’t hesitate to contact them again. We now have two machines working side by side, that wrap in excess of 200 pallets per day. The ROBOPACs are very easy to operate, and machine changeovers for different pallet combinations are undertaken quickly and efficiently.”
He concluded, saying: “As in all businesses, cost control is of vital importance, and because of the way the ROBOPACs stretch the film around the boxes, we are experiencing a very worthwhile saving in film costs. I think that’s good news all round.”
Aetna Group UK
Colin Barker
Tel: 01234 825050
Email: colin.barker@aetna.co.uk
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