For almost 40 years, more and more high-speed doors from Efaflex have been reliably doing their job in the production of Wernsing Feinkost GmbH in Addrup-Essen/Oldenburg, Germany. And in all these years, both companies have worked with many ideas and in partnership to ensure that the installation of a door has become a success story with a future.

The production halls of Wernsing Feinkost GmbH are as dynamic as the relationship between the two business partners. Employees ensure that the pallets with packaged goods are directed to the correct transport routes. In other rooms, they carefully monitor seemingly endless production lines on which the deli salads are produced and packaged, which we soon be found on the supermarket shelves. Each production area is separated from the other by an EFAFLEX high-speed door. Today, more than 200 EFAFLEX high-speed doors are installed at the most varied of locations in the huge Wernsing Feinkost GmbH plant. In the course of their time together, what used to be a small food company from Addrup-Essen in Oldenburg has grown into a huge company that is now one of the most important employers in the region and in other areas of Germany.

At the same time, EFAFLEX has developed into a specialist and premium provider for high-speed industrial doors and exciting industry solutions. The application variants of the doors in the Wernsing Feinkost GmbH plant are correspondingly diverse: “They are designed for high loads and can therefore be found in almost all production-related areas. They are also perfect for separating automated areas,” explains Patrick Wehage. He is as Deputy Team Leader for Technology, responsible for the maintenance of all logistical areas in the plant. The EFA-SRT-MS Machine Protection doors, for example, ensure that employees are not injured on the transport routes. High-speed roller doors EFA-SRT separate different production areas from each other.
In addition to the possibility of integration into smart logistics processes and the resilience of the doors, the planners at Wernsing Feinkost GmbH as a food manufacturer also considered the tightness and pressure stability of the curtains to be important.

Conveyor technology controls door movements

Compared to other areas of the plant, it is relatively quiet in the new deep-freeze high-bay warehouse. Gondolas packed with goods glide quietly on ceiling rails through an alley to various doors. They pause for a moment in front of the Machine Protection doors, which open immediately. The pallets are then transported on roller conveyors to the locks in front of the deep-freeze warehouse.
“As in other areas of our plant, the conveyor technology and driverless transport systems control the doors here,” Patrick Wehage emphasizes a special feature of the EFAFLEX door control and immediately adds: “This deep-freeze high-bay warehouse is inerted. For EFAFLEX, for reasons of fire and explosion protection, this meant that every cable had to be routed into the warehouse in cable ducts.”

The doors on the logistics routes in the plant open up to three times a minute, i.e. 180 times an hour. “Due to their gentle movements, they don’t suffer a great deal of wear and tear. This is simply robust technology that even a layman can handle well,” says Patrick Wehage, who describes himself as an enthusiastic mechanical engineer. “Spare parts come quickly when needed. This is particularly important for our chilled areas.” Doors from other manufacturers? “Never change a running system. It works perfectly, period!”  A good sign for the future: the joint success story can continue.

Protection for man and machine

Thanks to their space-saving, self-contained design, the Machine Protection doors from EFAFLEX can be perfectly integrated into the required protective equipment. They stand out due to their extraordinary resilience and stability. The standard door leaf of the EFA-SRT-MS is fully transparent and comes with warning strips as standard. Colored, highly tear-resistant and laterally stable hangings are also readily available. All curtain variants are free of paint-wetting-impairing substances. The interaction of a powerful frequency converter control and a functionally adapted drive enables the very high cycle rate of up to seven cycles per minute in production processes. The doors are constructed in such a way that a weight compensation mechanism is not necessary, which allows for a narrow design of the side frames. This significantly reduces the amount of maintenance and wear and tear. A transparent cover offers a clear view of the integrated safety limit switch of Cat. 4 / Pl according to DIN EN ISO 13849-1. With the optional floor supports, the protective devices can be set up free-standing. Uneven floors are compensated by leveling screws.

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EFAFLEX high-speed doors help optimise workflow