Introducing Carryline

David Rowe, managing director of Applied Automation (UK) Ltd had plenty to talk about at the PPMA Show, the highlight of which was the Carryline conveyor. PPMA was Applied’s first show in the UK with the product, but it has a rich and successful history in Nordic countries. 

Rowe explains: “We are delighted to have the Carryline product as part of our range. It is a good extension to our existing product lines and allows us to move into a new sector – material handling. Our traditional market focuses more on creating structures and assemblies.

“The product has a great reputation in northern Europe, and also fits well with the automation side of our business. If people are looking for a conveyor system, we can supply a system and if they want us to take it to another level with automated handling, palletisation, etc, we can bring other skills into play.”

The Carryline product is aimed at companies handling small components, up to 20kg, and has been deployed moving parts around factories, while a stainless steel version has been used in the food industry. It has also been used for handling small products, such as optical lenses, for Specsavers.

“This show is about us making that initial connection and announcing the product in the UK,” adds Rowe. “It is early days but so far we are very happy with the interest in the product.”

The company is also extending its product range with the new MayTec Pipe and Joint System. It has been the UK distributor for MayTec’s extruded aluminium profile system for many years. The profile is classically used for machine frames, structures and guards.

“This is an extension – into a pipe and joint system – which is very easily configured for making up simple benches and flow racks, which are very heavily used in the automotive industry,” says Rowe.

The PPMA Show also saw the debut of this MayTec system in the UK.

Applied Automation has moved to new premises in Plymouth, making the leap to a 140,000 sq ft facility from 60,000 sq ft.

“We had outgrown the facility we had,” says Rowe. “Our confidence in the market is very strong and we have new products coming online, some of which take up a lot of space when we are building them. The opportunity was there for us to move so we felt that now was the right time.

“We are a very significant machine builder and we now have a chance to move up to another level. Manufacturing is coming back into Europe and with widespread automation of processes, we’re finding there are huge opportunities right now.

“We call it process confidence. If you throw a lot of people at an assembly that’s fine, you may have relatively low cost labour, but do you have the confidence they did the job correctly all day, every day? If you automate, you reduce labour costs and also have total confidence in that quality.

“While near-shoring is a significant trend, a lot of our customers are taking our solutions overseas and in the last year we’ve shipped to Germany, Spain, Italy, USA, and China, among others.”