Safer bays
November 1st 2007

Frozen food maker Birds Eye, formerly part of Unilever, has chosen Castell's Salvo to protect warehouse operatives at its Hull factory from the threat of unscheduled trailer departure.

Birds Eye recognised that its existing system of traffic lights and manual powering up of loading bays by drivers failed to physically prevent a driver from leaving a bay prematurely, and went to Castell for a safer alternative.

Having reversed their trailer up to the appropriate loading bay, drivers collect a Salvo Susie lock from a storage cabinet next to the bay door and fit it to the emergency airline coupling.This action releases the uniquely-coded key from the end of the unit, which drivers then insert into an electrical switch located next to the cabinet.

By turning the key drivers power up the bay, change the external traffic lights to red and send the internal lights to green. Loaders now know that it is safe to begin loading or unloading and depress the button on the internal switch to raise the bay door.

"We identified Salvo as a fail-safe system which was effectively one step up from our existing one," comments Mick Cahill, Birds Eye's safety and environmental manager, "the transfer to the new system has gone as smooth as silk." Once Salvo has been installed on all ten bays, warehouse staff were pleased to find that operating procedures remained unchanged.

"Salvo's not made a lot of difference to them," continues Mick, "except that it's much safer and now provides a physical block to drive-aways.

"A lot of the drivers had already seen it at other sites, so they took to it quite happily."

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