End-of-line partnersip with Gebo Cermix for Unilever's new Dubai facility

12 Jun 2018 --- The largest personal care factory in the Middle East and Africa – Unilever's site in Dubai – has had two comprehensive end-of-lines for production of shampoo and conditioner in shaped bottles implemented by Gebo Cermex. With this large installation, the global player in the consumer goods market was looking to use “state-of-the-art technology” that, combined with a modular design, claims to ensure faster, shorter and highly responsive production lines that production time. With eight formats to handle at 350 products/min per line and multiple changeovers per day in maximum ten minutes, Gebo Cermex was required to supply robotic product collation, shrink-wrapping and palletizing.

Over the next five years, the Middle East-African market is expected to be the fastest growing region in the world for beauty and personal care products. Young populations and rising levels of spending in many of the countries in the region offer growth opportunities that global consumer goods companies are trying to address via investments of billions of dollars into the Middle East.

The British-Dutch consumer goods company, Unilever, has also taken action along these lines, choosing the slogan ‘Made in the UAE’, thus acknowledging that the United Arab Emirates is a strong trade corridor that connects the East and West with significant growth potential and a world-class infrastructure. Annually, the Unilever factory produces a notable 500 million items (or 100,000 tons of liquid product), dealing with hair and skincare products under the Dove, Fair & Lovely, Lifebuoy, Vaseline, Clear, TRESemme and Sunsilk brands.

Gebo Cermex has supplied 19 machines across the different production lines of the 100,000 square meter Unilever facility, including packers and shrink-wrappers for premium pots of skin cream or tubs of facial cream in cartons.

Capabilities to solve complex end-of-line challenges
In general, when it comes to shaped-bottle handling as part of end-of-line operations, the very critical point is at the batch collation level. Gebo Cermex’ 40 years of experience in serving the Home and Personal Care (HPC) industry proved key in this challenging project, the company say, as Unilever was looking to build two high-speed lines (350 products/minute), able to handle eight different container formats with a large scope of sizes (from 100 to 900ml), yet targeting a maximum 10-minute line changeover with multiple changeovers per day.

Jean-Philippe Beduneau, Strategic Key Account Director for Unilever at Gebo Cermex, explains why he thought the company was particularly suited for the project: “We have a unique capability to propose complete end-of-line solutions for unstable bottles or bottles with complex shapes, not allowing mass flow accumulation. Our expertise answers the very demanding requirements of the Food, Home and Personal Care sectors, such as care handling of sophisticated containers, ultra-flexibility, and the high demand for line speed increases.”

“Our existing portfolio is also able to respect the specifications typically linked to shaped, unstable bottles. Nevertheless, in the Unilever case, their expectations about line speed and maximum time for changeovers challenged our design department to stretch the boundaries of the current range and merge modules and technologies like we never did before.”