The Ideal Electric Lifter for the Food and Beverage Industry - A Hygienic Material Handling Lift
Looking for an efficient, durable, and hygienic electric lifter optimally suited your branch of the food and beverage industry?
You probably have a good idea what would make the ideal material handling lift for your specific industry environment, and you may already know which features will make your lifting equipment function optimally.
We humbly believe we know that, too.
Some of the main lifter qualities you’re looking for are probably:
– Hygienic
– Easy to clean
– Corrosion resistant
… while of course having your lifter living up to the minimum and mandatory requirements of being:
– Strong
– Reliable
– Durable
– Ergonomic
– Safe
For material lifting equipment operating in the food and beverage industry, demands are high on nearly all parameters – right from functionality and strength, to hygiene and easy cleaning, to ergonomics and safety.
From our customers we’ve heard many stories describing the typical challenges they face with their industrial equipment. Perhaps you recognize some of these yourself:
- All the frequent and repetitive lifting, rotating, tipping, pouring, and emptying of large bowls, vessels and boxes in industrial dairies, kitchens, bakeries, breweries and the likes take its toll on most industrial equipment in the long run.
- If the production environment is highly saline or acidic, most metals face a hard battle staying corrosion resistant.
- If you add to that the paramount importance of hygienic materials and routines for safeguarding product purity, most material handling lift equipment certainly have their work cut out for them.
So finding the optimal electric lifter for your food and beverage processing and manufacturing environment may not be such an easy task.
But hopefully we can help.
At 2Lift we have many years of experience designing and manufacturing optimized hygienic stainless steel industrial material handling equipment for the food and beverage industry.
In our experience the main ingredients in the recipe for creating the ideal hygienic material handling lift is the combination of:
- High quality components in the optimal material choice (austenitic stainless steel).
- Innovative design that makes the lifter easy to clean.
Our hygienic electric lifters can lift and handle everything from reels and rolls, drums and other vessels, atypically dimensioned pallets to boxes of all shapes and sizes.
Our prime speciality is designing bespoke industrial material handling equipment. Thus we can adapt our lifters to suit whichever specific needs you may have.
– Maybe you need a specially dimensioned lift to fit into tight or narrow spaces?
– Or perhaps you’re looking for a particular, not-yet-seen electric lifter tool to handle your unique load?
Whatever the case, we adjust. We adapt. We can even design from scratch.
If what you require is more standard and less demanding, we also have wide range of standard solutions that may just fit your needs perfectly.
The Benefits of an Electric Lifter from 2Lift - When Innovative Design Is Combined with Stainless Steel
Aside from the resources poured into the development of the optimal design, stainless steel is probably our most important component when it comes to ensuring that an electrical lifter is both strong, hygienic and easy to clean.
In this way we make sure that the industrial material handling equipment from 2Lift lives up the necessary industrial regulatory demands pertaining to the different branches in the food and beverage industry (be that e.g. GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) and/or the Guidelines for Materials of Construction for Equipment in Contact with Food as published by EHEDG (European Hygiene Engineering and Design Group).
Aside from being a safe, ergonomic and healthy choice for your personnel, a 2Lift material handling lift for the food and beverage industry is:
Strong and reliable
Stainless steel has excellent longevity and doesn’t fatigue as easily as many other metals. Combining this feature with good craftsmanship in terms of competent welding, and you can look forward to your electric lifter putting in many, many years of work before its well-earned retirement.
Ensures high product purity
Stainless steel is a very stable and inert type of alloy that doesn’t chemically react with food or liquid in any significant way. In this way an electrical lifter from 2Lift is a good choice if you need to live up to the food industry regulations as put forward by the European Commission:
“FCMs [Food Contact Materials] should be sufficiently inert so that their constituents neither adversely affect consumer health nor influence the quality of the food.”
Corrosion resistant
Stainless steel is protected by a clever, invisible self-repairing thin film made of chromium oxide. This film is automatically created (and re-created when damaged) in the presence of oxygen. So treated optimally, stainless steel is self-preserving.
Easy to clean
The combination of minimal crevice / cavity-free design and stainless steel is hygienically ideal. Stainless steel is non-absorbent and can be manufactured to have a very smooth surface finish (a low surface roughness) which makes it very easy to clean. Also a low surface roughness (Ra) helps prevent an unwanted colonisation of micro-organisms and bacteria, which lowers the risk of contaminating the next round of production.
Stainless Steel Grades and Hygienic Design for Food Applications
Our stainless steel lifters are designed for food and beverage applications, combining carefully selected stainless steel grades, excellent corrosion resistance and hygienic design for easy cleaning.
Which stainless steel is right for your application? AISI 304 vs. AISI 316L.
There are many types of stainless steel alloys, but the ones most frequently used in food contact equipment are those from the austenitic stainless steel family, AISI 304 and AISI 316L (the steel alloy of 316 is even referred to as the “‘Food Grade” alloy).
The power of these two steel alloys is that both contain about 10-12% nickel and about 17-18% chromium which in combination makes them both easily weldable (which is great for us) and yet very strong and corrosion resistant.
The main difference between AISI 304 and AISI 316L is the addition of about 2% molybdenum for 316L. This addition further adds to 316L’s protective shield again corrosion, thus making a bit tougher than its slightly lower-numbered sibling.
So while AISI 304 may be a suitable choice for most food and beverage environments e.g. milk and most other types of dairy, AISI 316L is the obvious choice when the environmental conditions are particularly ‘hostile’. And by hostility we mean that the environment is characterized by a particularly high number of corrosive agents, typically caused by a high concentration of sulphur or chloride.
Thus AISI 316L is often the preferred choice for various salty and acidy food production environments such as cheese, soy sauce, white wine, mustard, vinegar and jam (reference).
How are our lifters designed for easy cleaning?
Being able to easily and properly clean an electrical lifter is essential for both hygienic purposes and long term corrosion prevention.
Our stainless steel material handling lifters not only tolerate thorough cleaning, they actually thrive on frequent cleaning. You literally can’t clean them enough. They can’t be worn out, or in any way weakened by cleaning.
We have designed our lifters for the food and beverage industry in such a way that they embrace effective and frequent cleaning. A thorough wiping or hosing down with warm water, with or without a gentle cleaning agent, is perfect for our lifters.
The primary task of our hygienic design is to avoid as many crevices and cavities as possible to avoid dust, dirt and food matter taking up unwanted residence in holes and cracks. As already mentioned, such instances not only enhance the risk of food contamination but also corrosion.
To optimize on cleanliness, our industrial material handling lifters are designed in such a way that you can easily access all parts – inside and outside – for a thorough hosing or wiping down.
And since the lifting mechanics inside our lifters are built in stainless steel, too (with no presence of any oil or lubricants), that area can be easily cleaned as well, if need be.
For assembling the electric lifter, we often recommend the use of hexagonal screws as they are very easy to clean when using a hose. However, we can also build your lifter with button head screws and then fill up the cavities with silicone, if you consider that the optimal choice.
The wheels on our lifters are also food approved and thus easy to clean.
Gallery of Food & Beverage Material Handling Equipment - Standard & Customized Solutions
Model ERU-EC: Electric Rotation Unit with Scissor Clamp for Drums
With this example of an electric drum handler equipment, the drum is gripped with bands mounted on a scissor clamp.
This solution allows the drum to rotate sideways, 180° in each direction. The maximum lifting capacity is 120 kg.
Model SRU-SPT: Simple Rotation Unit with special Tool for Mould Injector
With this customized material handling solution, parts and tools for process equipment can easily be lifted and rotated.
This specific solution is adapted to fit a mould injector, however the design can be fitted to all sorts of alternative geomeries as well.
The maximum lifting capacity is up to 250 kg.
Model ERM: Electric Roll Manipulator
With this fully electric roll lifter solution, the rolls are gripped in the core with an electrically activated expanding mandrel. The core of the roll is gently fastened to the mandrel via a tooth plate. When securely fastened, rolls can then be tipped up or down, from core horizontal to core vertical.
This is the ideal solution for non-through-shaft applications, for instance when rolls need to be lifted and tipped from a pallet and placed on a fixed mandrel.
The solution will accommodate different core diameters and can handle rolls up to 350 kg.
Model F: Fork for Dolly
Using this variation of a pallet lifter solution, a dolly with boxes can be lifted to the correct height for emptying or filling each box.
The forks can of course be adapted to countless other applications as well, lifting up to 280 kg.
Model CA: Crane Arm Electric Can Gripper
With this customized electric can gripper solution, a can is gripped with a clamp and subsequently positioned using an articulated boom arm.
The solution accommodates cans up to 80 kg.
Model ERU-SPT: Electric Levelling- and Rotation Unit with Special Tool
When changing machine parts in production lines, safe and precise handling is critical. With this material handling solution, a machine part is held securely and leveled before being place on a machine axle.
Maximum lifting capacity is 350 kg.
Model ERU-ST: Electric Rotation Unit and Tool for Trolley
With this type of electric trolley lifting equipment a trolley is gripped with a tool mounted on a rotation unit. In this way the trolley can be lifted and rotated allowing it to be placed upside down on a rack for cleaning, or during production the trolley can be lifted and rotated to transfer the content.
The solution accommodates a weight up to 350 kg.
Inspired by Our Range of Lifters? Or Didn’t Quite Find the Solution You Need? Whatever the Case, Hopefully We Can Help You
At 2Lift we specialize in custom designing high quality electric lifter equipment for heavy industrial use. Thanks to the flexible principles in the 2Lift Modular Design, we can build and adapt to suit almost any need. If your needs go beyond the current modular capabilities, this is no problem as we can easily custom design.
We will go to great lengths to adapt our lifters optimally for your working environment and to live up to your specific industry regulations. (We also manufacture GMP optimized handling lifts for the pharmaceutical industry and have wide range of solutions for the storage industry.
To get a glimpse of some of our custom design solutions, please feel free to pay our bespoke section a visit, and if you have any questions of any sort, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
