As any estate agent will tell you, property values are determined by 'location, location, location'. If your house is deemed to be in the right place, it will sell at a premium.

Food processors can control the speed of conveyor belts with ABB's latest machinery drive, which the firm claims is the most adaptable in the market. The drive allows control of synchronous or asynchronous motors, with an open loop or closed loop design, and is rated from 0.75kW to 45kW. It uses standard AC drive technology - but with significant performance improvements that could take ABB into the servo performance arena.

Astec Conveyors has helped Walkers Snack Foods increase output at its Leicester plant by modifying its carton handling system.

Tsubaki has introduced a new range of poly-steel food-grade chains in standard BS sizes.

Monk Conveyors has become the sole agent in the UK for Easy Conveyors of Holland.

Too many engineers are using the wrong criteria to select chain and ending up with a product that is doomed to premature wear, or even failure, as a result, says Renold Chain as it launches a solution to the problem. According to Renold, many engineers are using breaking load as an absolute measure of performance when there is a huge variation in working life for different chains with identical breaking loads. It has produced a downloadable web-based programme to hep selection.

Conveyors are an integral part of most food factories, providing an interface between the process and the product as they move material from one stage to the next. But because they self-evidently fit in between all those different stages of production - from raw materials handling, through processing, to packaging - their importance can often be undervalued.

Two state-of-the-art bottle handling systems have been installed at Arla Foods' new 150M litre dairy in Lockerbie.

A heavy-duty pallet handling system, which provides buffer storage between production and cold store, has been installed by European Conveyor Systems at McCain Foods' factory near Peterborough.