Swinson also has built a wholesale business to market the majority of his annual 10,000 ton harvest. Some peanuts are roasted, packaged and sold to retailers, but the majority of the harvest is left raw and sold in bulk. Golden Grove’s raw in-shell peanuts are harvested, packed in 900-lb. bulk bags and shipped to customers around the world. As the wholesale business of raw in-shell peanuts grew, Swinson saw clear opportunities to improve process efficiencies in his company’s bulk bag filling.
Golden Grove employees were filling 20 bulk bags each day by hand. Each of three filling stations in the warehouse contained a hopper with a slide gate installed at the bottom of it; a scale was positioned below. An operator opened the slide gate, allowing the peanuts to fall into the bulk bag until it was within two pounds of the target 900-lb. weight.