Mechanised Meat Unloader

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31277, 25 January 1967, Page 19

Mechanised Meat Unloader

In March the Port of London Authority expects to be running its first tests on the £650,000 mechanised meat installation a sort of Bluff allweather loader in reverse—which has been designed to unload New Zealand lamb at the Royal Victoria Docks, says the London correspondent of “The Press.” Mr Guy Jones, mechanical engineer-in-charge of the construction programme, recently showed me about the buildings and plant at B berth and prophesied that they would considerably reduce unloading time. “It is expected that the turn-around time will be at least halved,” he said. The P.L.A. will naturally be pleased with any move which helps to reduce congestion in the London docks, but other advantages of this scheme are the speed-up of ship-to-shore transfer; maintenance of a constant and accurate check of the number of carcases leaving the ships and being unloaded on to the lorries (preventing loses by theft); ensuring that the right carcases reach the right lorries; and minimising waiting time for vehicles at the docks. In addition, it is felt that the scheme will reduce damage to carcases and minimise the time during which they are exposed to normal atmospheric temperatures. The equipment will put 9000 lamb carcases or 300 tons of carton meat into lorries, railway trucks, or barges every hour. Sharing of Cost Most of the initial capital expense for the plant (the computer to be its nerve centre is now being tested) is being borne by the P.L.A., but there is a contribution from the Blue Star and Shaw SaviU Lines, which will eventually pay rental for the use of the equipment But the point which will increasingly worry the P.L.A. as shipping circles and producers increase the pressure for container cargoes is whether the installation is going to have much of an economic life. The P.L.A. is spending £2O

million on the Tilbury Docks to provide six new berths to take the fast, modern container ships. The new installations at European ports such as Rotterdam has forced the P.L.A. to do this.

The shipping correspondent of “The Times” recently said that the Tilbury development could decisively affect Britain’s survival as a major maritime nation. Mr John Lunch, P.L.A.’s director of finance and commerce, says: “The danger is that this country, so far as transport is concerned, may become the offshore island of Europe.” I spoke with Mr G. A. Wilson, the P.L.A.’s director of engineering, after a visit to Tilbury, and asked whether the development of container shipping berths in London and the suggestions for refrigerated containers in New Zealand might mean that the Royal Victoria Docks meat unloader would become a white elephant Indecision Seen

“The shipping lines don’t seem to know their own minds,” Mr Wilson replied. It must seem ironical that the shipping men who were largely responsible for persuading the P.L.A. to build the Bluff-type unloader now seen inclined to favour containers.

The New Zealand Shipping Company has already announced that its first two Mataura-class refrigerated cargo liners will be designed to carry a number of containers, although none of these will be refrigerated containers.

Shipping men could with some validity say that the P.L.A. does not appear to know its own mind—it races ahead with giant containerberth development plans at Tilbury, the biggest development since the war, and then Lord Simon, its chairman, visits New Zealand and emphasises that container shipping is not the only answer for modernisation.

As far as can be judged at this stage, and with the verdict of the Molyneux report in New Zealand as yet unknown, shipping lines are unlikely to build any more of the conventional type of refrigerated cargo liners for the New Zealand trade. Containers or some further con-

cept are bound to influence future design.

But it must be remembered that most of the existing vessels are relatively new, with at least 10 to 15 years of life left. The refrigerated ship is a piece of special equipment costing a lot of money, and would be used to the end of its economic life. In the time in which the existing ships continue to ply round the world, unloading much of their wares at the Royal Victoria Docks, the new container ships, in which refrigerated containers can be “plugged in,” will probably be designed—and built—to take over when required. Some experts here guess that the use of the meat unloader will then gradually diminish as more and more ships switch to methods involving containers or other forms of “unitising.” It is said, however, that the use of containers would mean a good deal of sorting of the carcases in New Zealand to place the required type of carcases in the correct container for difficult consignees. With the present traditional cargo liners, regular services radiate in duplicate from Britain and Europe to most destinations. The container ships, now being developed in Britain by consortia such as Overseas Containers (to which the P. and O. Group belongs) and Associated Containers, with their high speed, prepacked cargo, and quick turnround, will be able to do the work of up to a dozen existing ships. There is no doubt that container ships will be built in numbers to take advantage of this situation, and reason to believe that sooner or later the containers for refrigerated cargo will be developed and gradually take over present methods of handling. Years Of Research

The Royal Victoria Docks unloader scheme is a result of several years’ research and planning. The basic problem of supplying merchants id London with New Zealand lamb is that they may require a particular head-mark on the carcase, or any of 32 grades of meat.

The answer depends on accurate stowage plans being provided by the shipping lines in advance of the arrival of the ship so that

the exact whereabouts of each type of meat in the holds is known. Then carcases and cartons will be fed from the ship’s hold by extendable conveyors connected directly to the boot of pocket-belt elevators. The cargo is lifted by an advance type of portable pocket-belt elevator which has a lifting boom and can deliver the cargo to any of three independent conveyer systems. This enables the elevator to feed from any hold of the ship to any of three automatic tallying and sorting banks. Special hatch covers enable work in all weathers. Dati on the sequence in which meat can be unloaded (gained from air-mail information received from the shipping line) will have been processed on punched cards beforehand, and wholesalers will be told when to expect the ship at London and given a time to send their lorries to collect from the dock. It is expected eventually that these vehicle call-times will be accurate to within 30 minutes.

It is vital to the system that both road and rail transport be immediately available at the dockside according to a strict time-table.

The photograph shows one of the three new elevators being constructed at the Royal Victoria Dock for the mechanical unloading of New Zealand lamb carcases.