Workers are daily trudging around pallets in warehouses across Australia, their bodies yearning for some respite from the endless cycle of manually tightening plastic film around the base and then rising up to finish the job on top. Bending low to anchor the film on the floor, reaching up to tie off the top wrap, the same awkward stretch, load after load. And the cost of all this manual toil shows up in the comp claims at a pretty predictable rate.
WorkSafe’s Already Spelled It Out Quite Clearly
Victoria’s WorkSafe has laid down the law in their guidance on stretch-wrapping pallets, and that document is itself part of the Occupational Health and Safety Regs from 2017. And in that document, they’ve explicitly identified manual pallet wrapping as a no-no, one of those hazardous manual handling tasks that’ll give you a musculoskeletal disorder if you do it too much. And WorkSafe is very clear that employers need to eliminate or reduce that risk as far as is practicable. Most of the injuries are caused by people bending, twisting and reaching while lugging a loaded film dispenser round a stationary pallet, a pretty classic risk profile. Installing a pallet wrapper is pretty much the first thing on the list of control measures, before you even think about changing procedures or getting some manual aids.
Safe Work Australia‘s 2024 stats show that back injuries are running at about one in five of all serious workplace injury claims nationwide, and musculoskeletal disorders are by far the biggest category of workers’ comp claims in manufacturing and logistics. And get this, the cost of one of these little back strain claims, including lost productivity, replacing someone to do the job, and getting the injured person all fixed up, actually usually ends up being more than the annual operating cost of a basic semi-automatic pallet wrapper.
Turntable Or Rotating Arm, Which One’s Best For You?
Turntable pal, they swivel the pallet while you do the film, works pretty well for the average load, in a pretty average volume environment. Most distribution centres in Australia have one of these. The rotating arm pal, they keep the pallet steady while the arm zips around it, really good for heavy, wonky or unstable loads where you don’t want to be spinning that pallet and taking a chance on it falling over.
The fully auto inline ones can integrate with conveyor belts, and will wrap the pallets up all by themselves, great for high throughput ops that need more than 30 to 40 pallets wrapped an hour. And then there’s the semi auto ones, still need someone to position the pallet, but once that’s done, the machine takes care of the rest, takes the ergonomic hassle out of the job, but still keeps the upfront costs affordable for smaller operations. It’s all about finding the right machine for your needs, and that means doing a proper assessment of what your pallets are like and how fast you need to get them wrapped.
Automating The Film Wrap Changes Everything
Manual wrapping is a total waste of film, the tension goes all over the shop, the operator gets knackered and you end up using loads more film to make sure you get everything wrapped up tight. Automated machines have these pre-stretch dispensers that cut that film usage right down, by 30 to 50 per cent compared to manual wrapping at the same level of containment, and they can get the film on that load really evenly, too.
Integration Issues That Matter Before Purchase
A pallet wrapper is placed at the end of the line. Its compatibility with the preceding machines is going to determine what part of theoretical efficiency is going to translate to the real thing. In case of the phased approach to automation, businesses need to verify that the semi-automatic machine purchased now is compatible in terms of footprint and electrical specification with the fully automatic machinery planned for integration within two or three years.
Conveyor integration requirements like pallet entry speed, indexing accuracy, and pallet exit clearance have to be defined with respect to the actual production environment. The carton sealing and labelling machinery installed ahead impacts the pallet design and load homogeneity; thus, the wrap cycle settings required are going to be affected.
How To Evaluate Suppliers On The Criteria That Matter?
Locally sourced spare parts for pre-stretch roller assemblies, rotation drive units, and film carriage units should be considered. Import machines without Australian-based service network are going to create the situation when breakdown will result in the shutdown of end-of-line machinery because of the long supply times; the purchase price savings won’t compensate for the operational costs here.
Wrap cycle memory programmable to various pallet configurations allows avoiding per-load adjustments in the mixed product distribution facilities. Suppliers whose site assessments are based on the production data are offering different value than those who just hand out the brochure and wait for an order.
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