Mexico: New DTS plug-in tray for stone wool plugs

INA Plastics designed a new tray for stone wool plugs based on the Double Tray Invention, the DTS Plug-In tray on the 60X40 cm footprint holding 240 stone wool plugs of 27 mm.

The cell design of the DTS Plug-In offers ideal air pruning and allows the fingers of robotic transplanters to pick up the plants, thus the tray works well in advanced automatic production lines and offers all the benefits of the Double Tray System: economy, hygiene, productivity, plant quality and environmental protection.

Although the cost of the DTS Plug-In tray allows it to be considered as a one-use tray, with all the benefits of this procedure, it can be reusable by reusing the bottom tray for at least three or four years, replace only the top tray in order to take all the advantages of the one-use tray at half the cost of any other alternative e.g. light EPS tray.

The new DTS Plug-In tray will be available before the end of this year and its presentation coincides with the decision of the company to start producing the DTS locally, close to the big markets. This became necessary in order to be able to cover the demand, to minimize transportation costs and to ensure the growers for the availability of the trays even in unforeseen circumstances and periods of extreme demand.

Following this commitment, the company will establish production facilities in the Guanajuato area, to service customers in Mexico, via its affiliate company, INA Insumos Agricolas SA de CV, for the sales, technical support and distribution of its products. The first stage of production operations will be the set-up with an automatic line, especially developed by Conic System, for the assembly of the DTS Plug-In tray with stone wool plugs. Conic System is in close cooperation with INA Plastics over the years and has already in the market a special automation, the Double De-stacker, for the assembly of DTS.

The aim is to establish, as of March 2019, production of the DTS Plug-In tray and other configurations DTS trays, for the Mexican and the US market.