Verlinde supplies electric belt hoists for a brining application

A cheese-making plant in Mayenne had been struggling with recurring maintenance issues affecting the chain hoists used in its cheese-brining process. Bretagne Manutention, a Verlinde partner and this manufacturer's 30-year handling-equipment supplier, stepped in with a custom-built solution.

Part of the Fenwick Group, Bretagne Manutention focuses on selling and maintaining handling equipment such as forklifts, electric pallet trucks and aerial work platforms. Its head office sits in Rennes, and together with 8 branches across Brittany and Mayenne it employs 200 people. Certain branches retain lifting-equipment specialists — expertise carried over from when Fenwick itself sold hoists — and these branches work alongside Verlinde. The Laval branch is one such example: for 30 years it has handled maintenance and equipment for handling products at a cheese-making plant with around fifty items of equipment.

The Mayenne-based cheese plant, which turns out several cheese varieties, has a dedicated brining room, where the cheeses are steeped in a brine bath so they take up salt.

The room contains 7 dipping tanks, each fitted with a hoist that moves the trays loaded with cheese. The trays go through several stages of soaking in the brine baths before heading to the maturing cellar.

The plant had been running chain hoists from a competing manufacturer, but the lifting chains kept corroding even with regular lubrication, and the resulting oxidation triggered frequent production stoppages. On a customer visit, Dominique Denou, Sales Manager at Bretagne Manutention Laval, drawing on his extensive food-industry background, recommended switching to Verlinde EUROLIFT BH electric belt hoists in place of the traditional chain hoist technology.

Hoists built for food-industry settings, delivering spotless operation to satisfy even the toughest hygiene standards

Verlinde EUROLIFT BH electric belt hoists comply with the food sector's toughest hygiene rules. What sets them apart is a high-strength, rot-proof lifting belt paired with a dirt-free guide system suited to any environment. A mechanically variable 2-speed lift motor and 2-speed steering motor, combined with a fully sealed gearbox, deliver quiet, precise handling of loads from 500 to 5000 kg.

A tailored adaptation

The manufacturer commissioned Bretagne Manutention to carry out a full study, aiming to optimise the whole lifting setup and raise the hoists' load capacity from 1000 kg to 1200 kg. Verlinde backed Bretagne Manutention in putting together these proposals.

Beyond optimising the lifting side, the project also had to work around particular structural limits: a EUROLIFT BH hoist typically runs on an IPN rail, but the brine room's layout did not give the hoist enough travel on that rail type. The options were to modify the existing structure and recalculate the suspended structure's loads — a costly route — or to adapt the hoists instead. Verlinde's proposal was to relocate the hoist motor elsewhere, freeing up height so the existing galvanised hollow-section rails could still be used.

Greater production capacity and improved hygiene

Installation of the first EUROLIFT BH hoist took place in 2020. Three months in, the trial had already proved itself: maintenance and lubrication work dropped and corrosion issues disappeared entirely. The remaining six hoists were then swapped in, cutting down breakdowns and production downtime. Bretagne Manutention Maintenance now maintains the installation, with regular monitoring visits every six months.

Dominique Denou says: «Ever since we installed the first EUROLIFT BH hoist, our customer has told us how pleased they are with the improved hygiene and the drop in corrosion-related downtime. We've kept supporting them, especially with belt adjustments and settings tailored to their constraints. An installer's strength lies in providing solutions.”

He continues: «Verlinde stayed involved throughout the project, right down to helping select the most suitable belt and fine-tune it. That's what sets a supplier like Verlinde apart — premium solutions backed by support all the way through. It means everyone can work with confidence.”