La Glacière Narbonnaise has brought in Promalyon to automate palletising at its new plant in Lézignan-Corbières, between Narbonne and Carcassonne. The company makes ice and ice cubes for professional buyers, from canneries to fish merchants and large retailers.
Inside the Investment
The site cost €12M and covers 3,500 sqm. Its owner calls it the country’s largest ice-cube production unit in the making. Promalyon, a Lyon-based specialist in industrial and logistics robotics, installed two robots that build a pallet every three minutes and run up to 14 hours a day. An automatic stretch-wrapper and an automated cold-room loading system complete the cell.
Cold, Repetitive, Now Automated
The loading system stacks pallets straight inside the refrigerated area with no manual handling. That matters in a plant where cold makes repetitive work harder and riskier, Promalyon noted. Pallets accumulate continuously and the whole process runs more steadily, which helps when heatwaves push demand up. La Glacière Narbonnaise is a subsidiary of the Breton farm cooperative Even and traces its roots to the late 19th century.
For a product this seasonal, steadier throughput during a heatwave may count for more than the headcount saved.
