By carolemetcalfe

Tong gears up for LAMMA focussing on 2025 innovations

Tong Engineering is excited to announce its preparations for the upcoming LAMMA Show, where the company will showcase its advanced vegetable handling equipment from field to pack as well as sharing exciting developments for the year ahead.

The LAMMA event, which is taking place once again at Birmingham’s NEC will see Tong exhibiting alongside Tong Swift Lift, bringing the perfect opportunity to highlight the progress of Tong SwiftLift since the Tong takeover in late 2023.

Throughout 2024, Tong Swift Lift has increased sales of the company’s high-quality range of elevators and conveyors in the UK and worldwide, bringing efficient handling of a wide variety of vegetables and materials, as well as a renewed focus on grain handling for store loading. By using elevators like the company’s flagship Extendo elevator in place of traditional grain pushers, growers can achieve very effective handling of harvested grain, minimising damage and preserving its quality. By delivering grain evenly into storage, Tong Swift Lift elevators facilitate better airflow, enabling drying systems to work more efficiently and significantly reducing drying costs.

In addition to these developments, Tong will also be welcoming VHM Machinery, Netherlands manufacturer of high-performance box and big bag handling systems, to the Tong stand in Hall 7, following their recent partnership. The new collaboration sees Tong offering VHM’s forward-thinking box handling solutions across the UK and comes as an exciting step in Tong’s continuous focus on bringing the latest technologies to the vegetable handling industry, partnering with best-in-class manufacturers to supply fully-integrated solutions from field to pack.

From a flexible feed and discharge of boxes to and from the production process, to completely automatic stacking and destacking of boxes at either end of the handling process, VHM equipment is designed to bring continuous, high capacity box handling solutions that dramatically reduce or even remove the need for forklifts. The company’s innovative systems ensure the right boxes are in the right place at impressive throughputs.

Tong will also be representing palletising solutions manufacturer Verbruggen at the LAMMA event. Manufactured to ensure quick, efficient and uniform stacking of bags, boxes and crates on pallets or sheets, Verbruggen palletisers offer precise product stacking capabilities at any speed, resulting in a palletiser for every throughput. With various automatic and semi-automatic options, a Verbruggen palletising system not only brings a significant reduction in labour costs and downtime, but also utilises loading space in the most efficient way.

The Tong team will be on hand at LAMMA to discuss these innovations and demonstrate how the latest technologies are transforming post-harvest handling, reducing the reliance on the workforce through automation.

“We look forward to welcoming farmers and vegetable producers from all over the UK and overseas at LAMMA our stand 7.750 in Hall 7, where they can be sure of a warm welcome with light refreshments,” says Simon Lee, Sales Director at Tong Engineering.