No matter what your challenge with size reduction is, the probability is very high that Vecoplan has successfully tackled it before, either in the United States or internationally. The company is a world leader in size reduction and material handling systems and is a leading choice for processing your wood pallet, packaging and dunnage residuals. Vecoplan offers a comprehensive range of pallet scrap grinders and complete wood pelletizing systems.
The company’s North American operation, Vecoplan USA, is headquartered in North Carolina with a regional office in Eastvale, California. Proven in the field, Vecoplan’s customers include leading pallet manufacturers, rental pool operators and recyclers worldwide. The company’s grinders have been turning wood waste into mulch, animal bedding and boiler fuel since 1969.
With its equipment installed in over 120 countries and over 5,000 installations in North America alone, Vecoplan has extensive experience. According to Yuri Chocholko, sales manager – wood and biomass, South at Vecoplan, the company’s wide array of wood scrap processing solutions give customers options for tailored, turnkey systems. Also, Vecoplan’s top-flight customer service ensures that operations remain up and running and limits any downtime.
Why Low-speed, High Torque Technology?
According to Chocholko, the primary benefit of a low-speed, high-torque machine is dealing with the sheer volume of nails and foreign material that are encountered in wood pallets and wood packaging debris. “Having a low speed machine gives you the flexibility to handle that material before it tears the equipment apart,” he said.
“The thing that really jumps out about low-speed grinding is the safety factor,” Chocholko continued. Low-speed grinders will run anywhere from 100 to maybe 200 rpm, he noted. The low-speed machine has time to react to foreign material, so the chance of an explosion or a spark is greatly reduced.
“It’s like the difference between bringing a speedboat to a halt and stopping an oil tanker,” he said by way of analogy between low-speed and high-speed technology. “One takes a long, long time to slow down. The other one is much nimbler.” Other benefits of low-speed technology typically include reduced noise and dust levels and less wear and tear.
When asked what to think about when choosing a new grinder, Chocholko emphasized the importance of planning capacity for future growth. “That’s number one,” he said. If the growth involves putting on a second shift, for example, the existing grinder should be able to handle the increased volume generated by running the second shift.
If additional manufacturing or repair lines are added, however, then there will be more scrap material to process per shift, which will lead to a need for ‘increased size-reduction capacity. “As far as equipment selection goes,” he said, “just buy bigger. Buy bigger than you’ll need, and you’ll need to upgrade less often.”
Vecoplan’s Pallet Industry Workhorses
As to which Vecoplan equipment is best suited to pallet industry applications, Chocholko quickly spotlighted the VAZ series of machines and the VPC (Vecoplan Pallet Crusher) from among the company’s many machinery options.
The VAZ line features a single-rotor ground-fed system that Vecoplan has offered the pallet industry for over 25 years. However, a few years ago, the company launched the VPC, which has been a game changer. It is a dual-shaft machine with very slow-turning rotors. The VPC’s large, robust teeth tear wood items such as pallets, crates, CNC cutouts, and more, then reduces them to smaller pieces. The smaller pieces can be easily processed through a traditional single-shaft grinder.
According to Chocholko, the VPC has been very popular at distribution centers and other logistics operations. These facilities often deal with large quantities of low-quality or unconventional pallets and wood packaging, with operators seeking ways to improve the handling efficiency of these packaging residuals. The company sold 20 units in the VPC’s first 18 months of availability.
As for pallet companies, the use case for the VPC depends on the nature of the waste stream. For a pallet company that just builds new and is only dealing with manufacturing residuals, Chocholko said, the VPC is probably not needed. But if a pallet company wants to grind pallets, big crates, or other bulky material, it is the perfect choice. “It will tear those up in a heartbeat,” he said.
Vecoplan also offers a VPC 1600-VHZ 1600 combination. The VPC 1600 tears apart large or bulky wood waste materials, such as pallets, crates, CNC skeletons, and shipping dunnage, into manageable pieces. It then passes through the VHZ 1600 grinder. The industry-first, two-stage size reduction solution provides the largest throughput, least power consumption, and smallest footprint, according to the company. With capacities exceeding six tons per hour, Vecoplan’s VPC 1600–VHZ 1600 combo offers a low horsepower, electric-drive, and maintenance-friendly alternative to traditional diesel-powered grinders.
The system is an example of how the company effectively transfers technology from one industry application to another. “Generally speaking,” said, Matt Lowman, director of marketing and communications at Vecoplan, “the same sorts of mechanisms that govern the flow of, say, plastic material from a shredder into a granulator to ensure it doesn’t get backed up with too much material are at work in this system to regulate the flow from the VPC to the VHZ.”
Dock Door Machine Placement Reduces Handling, Strong Maintenance Support
Because low-speed grinding is quieter and less dusty, there is an opportunity to place the grinder inline or in close proximity to the production plant. The grinder does not need to be located at a considerable distance from production. By integrating the grinder with the plant, forklift travel time can be avoided, allowing for better utilization of forklifts and operators. One of Vecoplan’s largest customers almost always installs their grinders close to a dock door. As the dock doors are already designed to receive trailers, the fiber can be blown into a trailer at that location. “The space and infrastructure already exist for material collection,” Chocholko said.
Regarding maintenance, Chocholko noted that maintenance is simple, and the company has a ready inventory of parts that ships within 24 hours of order receipt. “We keep anywhere from $6 to $8 million worth of parts in stock in North Carolina,” he said. “It’s vitally important that we have items on the shelves.”
There is a parts and service staff of about 25 people. The California location also stocks parts. A component could also be pulled from a ready-to-go grinder in inventory in a pinch. The company currently has 50 machines in stock in North Carolina.
Chocholko emphasized the importance of including grinders in company preventative maintenance programs. “Grinders are not production machinery, so they tend not to get the love, care, and attention they deserve,” he said. “The production equipment is making money, and with grinders, we’re trying to save money.” While production equipment issues are typically discovered during regular inspections, this is often not the case with reduction equipment. He compared grinders to a household InSinkErator unit. “They don’t get serviced regularly, though everybody knows they should. So quite often, when something goes wrong, it’s panic stations.”
Solutions for Many Industries, Leveraging Huge Application Database
The company also builds reduction equipment for applications such as plastics recycling, paper and document destruction and waste processing. One rapidly growing segment, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, has been the destruction of medical waste. “Over the last two or three years, we have seen a big uptick from the hospital and healthcare sector,” Yuri said.
Serving such a broad range of industries and diverse global markets, the company can bring a great range of engineering and practical experience to any reduction challenge. “We’re able to share a lot of knowledge between us and other Vecoplan companies on how well a particular grinder will perform for a certain application because there’s a very, very good chance we’ve done it somewhere else. We have a very big application database, so we know a lot.”
The last few years have seen the pallet industry go through a massive swing from booming to lean times. Vecoplan has been extremely busy as many companies looked to reinvest some of those earnings from the good times into improving plant efficiency. And while the critical staffing issues have abated to a degree, there is always a case for investment to support greater operating efficiency, even more so when times are tough.
“Not to blow smoke, but I believe it is a good time to be in the pallet industry,” Yuri concluded. “There’s a lot of focus on efficiency, and distribution centers are popping up everywhere. And everything in those facilities is set on a pallet. So, it’s kind of a win-win situation.”
To find out more about Vecoplan USA, contact them at (336) 720-4401 or visit www.vecoplan.com.
Vecoplan Expanding to New Facility
Vecoplan also recently announced it will be opening a new North American headquarters and manufacturing facility in High Point, North Carolina, less than 20 miles from Greensboro. Once opened, the 94,000-square-foot plant will have 51 new full-time workers, according to the company. Vecoplan’s current North American headquarters is nearby in Archdale.
Ongoing company growth has led to the need for more room, particularly for production, warehousing/logistics and parts. The new structure will alleviate bottlenecks that have resulted from current size limitations. The company also believes the new location will allow it to pull from a wider, deeper and more skilled pool of talent.
The new plant is scheduled to be fully equipped and operating in the first quarter of 2024. “The new facility will reflect Vecoplan’s global corporate image and will certainly be the operations center for Vecoplan North America,” stated Vecoplan USA CEO Frank Boerjan.
