Palletiser Hire: Automating the End of Line Without a Capital Purchase

Most palletiser projects start with a capital purchase. A proposal is written, a business case is built, and the order waits for approval and for the right budget year. For many sites that is the right route. For others it is the reason the palletiser never arrives.

Hire is a different route to the same system. We offer hire on most of our palletiser range, at an hourly rate, with no capital purchase and with the system replaced every five years. This article sets out how it works, what the rate includes, and where it normally makes sense.

How palletiser hire works

The arrangement is deliberately simple.

We quote an hourly rate. For most systems this falls between £3 and £12 per hour, depending on the palletiser specified and the shift pattern it will run. Every quote we issue shows the hire rate alongside the outright price and the leasing option, so the three routes can be compared on the same page.

The system is replaced every five years. Where a hire continues beyond five years, we either replace the palletiser with a new system or significantly reduce the hire cost. The site is never left running a machine that has fallen behind the current range.

Shorter terms are available. Our standard hire runs for three years or more. Where a site cannot commit to that, we consider short-term hire case by case.

What the hourly rate includes

The palletiser supplied on hire is the same system that would be supplied on purchase. Nothing is removed from the specification.

That includes the easy-programming software fitted to every Granta system. An operator enters four dimensions – length, width, height and weight – and the software generates the viable stack patterns, ranks them by pallet efficiency and derives the robot paths, clearances, speed profiles and the orientation and grouping of product on the infeed. A new product size takes approximately five minutes to set up and requires no robot-programming skill.

On hire this matters more than it might first appear. With a conventionally programmed palletiser, the purchase price is only part of the cost of ownership. Each product change requires a programmer, and that cost continues for the life of the machine. On a Granta system there is no programming cost to add. The hourly rate is very close to the whole cost of running the palletiser.

Hire, lease or buy

All three routes are priced on every quote. The differences are in how the cost is treated, how the decision is approved, and what happens at the end of the term.

	Buy outright	Lease	Hire
Upfront cost	Full purchase price	None	None
Approval route	Capex process and board approval	Finance agreement with the leasing company	Operating cost, typically signed off within a production or site budget
Typical term	Not applicable	Three years	Three years or more; shorter hire considered case by case
Ongoing cost	Support contract	Fixed lease payments, savings normally exceed them from day one	Between £3 and £12 per hour depending on system and shift pattern
End of term	You own it from day one	Palletiser becomes yours for a nominal 1% fee	System replaced every five years, or hire cost significantly reduced
Upgrade path	New purchase, or reconfigure the modular cell	New lease at end of term	Built in: a new system every five years
Suits	Businesses with capital available and a stable line	Businesses that want to own the asset without the upfront cost	Businesses that want the palletiser as a running cost, with no capex and a built-in upgrade

Whichever route is chosen, the savings are the same. Labour is redeployed from manual palletising, throughput rises and manual-handling exposure is removed. Our payback calculator gives a figure for a specific line.

Where hire normally applies
Hire is usually the right route where one or more of the following is true:

• The site wants to automate now, but the next capital budget round is months away
• The palletiser can be approved as an operating cost within a production or site budget, where a capital request would go to board level
• Capital is committed elsewhere, to new lines, buildings or acquisitions
• The product range or throughput is expected to change within five years, and a fixed asset is a poor fit
• The site is on a short lease, or the line may move to another facility
• The business wants a defined route to a new system every five years rather than running one machine for fifteen
• A short-term increase in volume, a contract with a fixed end date, or a trial of automation before a wider roll-out

Hire is not the right answer for every site. Where capital is available and the line is stable, outright purchase is usually the lowest whole-life cost, and we will say so. The site assessment covers which route fits rather than recommending hire by default.

The system does not change on hire

Granta designs, builds, programmes and supports palletising systems in the UK and Ireland, as a KUKA Platinum System Partner and a Yaskawa partner, with record UK sales achieved for both. We have one of the largest palletiser install bases in the UK and Ireland, and every system is designed, assembled and tested at our own facility in Linton, Cambridge, before it leaves for site.

Our palletisers are built on a patented modular platform rather than as one-off bespoke cells. That has two consequences on hire. If the line changes during the term, the cell can be rearranged or extended rather than replaced. And the five-year replacement is a straightforward exchange of standard modules – a short job on the factory floor, not a new installation project.

Support is in-house and UK-based, from the team that built the system. Three service visits a year, remote diagnostics and on-site engineers are standard, with cover available up to 24/7. Operator and engineering training is included at installation.

Which systems can be hired

Hire is available on most of the range, including cobot palletisers, the compact palletiser, prebuilt robotic palletisers and full modular palletising systems. AMRs and AGVs for pallet movement can be included in the same arrangement.

Assessment on your own line

We will visit your site free of charge, measure up, and produce a full proposal with a 3D CAD layout of the palletiser in your own space. The proposal shows the hire rate, the lease option and the outright price side by side, so the decision can be made on the numbers.

Call 01223 499488 or book a free site visit.