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Tuesday, 25 April 2017

Pallet Eater reaches for the diocalm



Perfect timing - A Crowdcube funded company shows us all how well vetted and sensible their plans are  - in reality.

The Pallet Eater was described in its Crowdcube pitch in 2014 as - 

In contrast, The Pallet Eater picks up and stacks pallets in one seamless movement, electronically adjustable to the required pallet size as required. Moreover, the Pallet Eater builds and straps a squared column every time, reducing hazards and handling costs in the process.
The Pallet Eater turns this cumbersome link in the distribution process into a seamless part of the operation which should reduce time, cost and injury.
Compact, agile and easy to use, the Pallet Eater is built upon proven existing technology. As such, the concept is simple and we will require no further R&D before taking The Pallet Eater to market. 
We were sent information recently by a shareholder in this company - Stacking Systems Ltd. This is the same company that claimed in 2014 to have a machine that 'picks up and stacks pallets in one seamless movement'. Within the information package was a video which shows the latest version of the eater in action - stacking 4 pallets. This takes the machine over 3 mins. It is cumbersome and on several occasions the pallet gets stuck. It would have taken a human around 30 seconds to stack these four  - seamlessly. 
In their most recent accounts to YE July 16, the company made a £4k loss. It has no cash and a massive intangible asset of £150k - the 'IP' for the phenomenal Eater we presume.
People on Crowdcube invested over £130k in this. The projections, you know the ones Crowdcube called 'simplistic', showed the company making over £700k in net profits for the last year and over £1m to YE January 2017. This 'machine' couldnt make 5p. 
Now we know that these things take time. But it clearly states in the Crowdcube pitch that the machine already stacks pallets.....seamlessly - that was in 2014. We have seen the video and we feared for the operators safety moving 4 pallets 2 yards in late 2016. Their statement that the Eater requires no further R&D is accurate in that it clearly has not received any R&D - ever. It simply doesnt work.
Investors deserve better from you, Darren and Luke. In a recent excuse given to The Times about precisely this sort of outcome, Crowdcube claimed our research was 'simplistic' and that they gave investors a large volume of information to help make their decisions. We assume that both Darren and Luke would have been referring to the fact that this Pallet Eater moves seamlessly around a warehouse creating beautiful squared monuments to world of pallets. The only problem boys, as in so many cases on your platform, it doesnt and they do not. Time to leave the field for the professionals.

2 comments:

  1. Their numbers never did stack up..

    ReplyDelete
  2. How did people actually fund this investment?!!?!? as mentioned, their numbers never did stack up

    ReplyDelete