Alkon Supra Bins in India: the SB 1 to SB 8 range, its accessories, and where it beats the other four bin families
Supra is the open-front picking bin family in the ALKON catalogue, running from SB 1 at the small end through SB 8, with an SB 7X variant listed alongside. Shreeram Metafusion Engineers Pvt. Ltd. has been an authorised stockist of ALKON Plastics Pvt. Ltd. for over thirty years, and Supra is the range purchase and stores managers ask about most often, usually after a shop floor audit has shown that the same twenty fast-moving part numbers are living in cartons, trays and cut-open cardboard boxes. This page is a working guide to the whole Supra system rather than a product blurb: the size ladder, what partitions actually buy you, how louvre panels, the louvre panel stand, FSS stands, the universal rail AUR-1 and shop floor trolleys tie together, and the honest cases where a Hippo, Bull, Rhino or Tote bin is the better answer.
What the Supra range is, and where it sits in the ALKON line-up
Supra Bins are one of nine ranges in the ALKON catalogue that we stock and supply from Shop-1, Gagangiri CHS, Sector 17, Vashi, Navi Mumbai. ALKON describes itself as the manufacturer of the largest range of material handling bins in India, and the 476-plus products in the catalogue are split across families that each solve a different shape of problem rather than being cosmetic variations of one another. Supra is the open-front picking bin family, coded SB 1 through SB 8 with SB 7X listed as a variant. It is the range you reach for when a human hand goes into the container many times an hour, at a bench, on a wall of louvre panels, or on a trolley parked beside a machine.
The important thing about Supra is that it is a ladder, not a pair of sizes. Because the codes run in sequence, you can hold one part number in an SB 1 and the next part number in an SB 4 on the same rail, with the same hanging arrangement and the same label position, and the wall still looks and works like one system. That matters more than it sounds. Most bin walls in Indian plants degrade because someone bought two sizes, ran out of the useful one, and started using biscuit trays and old cartons for everything else. A ladder that steps in small increments means there is nearly always a Supra code that matches the part, so the improvised container never gets a foothold.
The second thing that defines the range is its accessory set. Supra bins were designed to be used with partitions, louvre panels, floor-standing louvre panel stands, tuff stand combinations, rails including the universal rail AUR-1, shop floor trolleys and crash carts. That is a system, and it changes how you buy: you are not purchasing loose plastic boxes, you are specifying a bin-and-carrier arrangement that has to fit the bench depth, the gangway width and the reach height you already have. The rest of this page treats it that way, because a bin bought without its carrier usually ends up stacked on a table within a month.
Where Supra sits against the other families is best stated plainly. Hippo bins occupy the small, tight-footprint end and are worth reading about separately; Bull bins carry more volume per bin at the cost of depth; Rhino Tuff bins in the ARTB series are the heavier-duty answer; Tote and Mammoth bins are for moving and holding bulk rather than for hand-picking. If you want the comparison in one place, we have set it out in detail elsewhere on the site. Supra earns its place in the middle: enough sizes to cover almost every small and medium part number, a shallow enough envelope to live on a normal bench, and the widest accessory support of the picking families.
Reading the size ladder: SB 1 to SB 8, and what SB 7X is for
The Supra ladder starts at SB 1, whose outside envelope is 125 x 100 x 60 mm with an inside of 117 x 80 x 52 mm. From there the codes step upward through SB 8. We deliberately do not publish a from-memory table of every intermediate step on this page, because the single most common cause of a wrong delivery is a buyer quoting a size he half-remembered instead of the code and dimension printed on the sheet. The full dimension table for every step lives in the catalogue on our downloads page, and we will send the relevant page across on WhatsApp or email before you raise the purchase order if that is quicker for you.
SB 7X sits beside SB 7 in the listing as a variant of that rung rather than an extra step in the sequence. Treat it as a separate line item with its own outside and inside figures, and check it against the shelf you intend to hang it on. Buyers get caught here when a storekeeper reads SB 7X as simply a bigger SB 7 and orders it for a shelf that was measured for SB 7. If you are designing a fixture, a trolley deck or a cut-out around the bin, ask us for the drawing rather than working from a rounded figure, because a few millimetres of hopper lip or hanging profile is exactly what decides whether the bin seats properly.
Two numbers matter for every step and they are not the same number. The outside dimension decides how many bins fit on a metre of rail and how far they project into the aisle. The inside dimension decides whether the part fits. A component that is 90 mm long will not sit flat in an SB 1, whose inside length is 117 mm but whose inside width is only 80 mm, unless it goes in lengthwise, and once it goes in lengthwise the operator can no longer scoop a handful out. Always test the actual part, in the actual orientation the operator will pick it, before you standardise a size across a plant.
There is also a difference between choosing a size for a new installation and choosing one for a plant that already runs Supra bins. A new installation can be optimised part number by part number, matching each item to the nearest rung and accepting six or seven codes across the floor. An existing installation is better served by fitting the new part into a code you already stock, even if that means a little wasted air inside the bin, because a bin you can swap from another line the same afternoon is worth more than a perfect fit that takes a purchase cycle to arrive. Decide which of those two situations you are in before you start listing codes.
The practical discipline that follows from all this is to fix on two or three Supra codes as standing stock for a whole plant rather than seven. A stores team in a Chakan or Talegaon plant that keeps SB 1, SB 4 and SB 7 on the shelf can replenish a broken bin, relabel a position and reassign a whole row to a new model without waiting for a purchase cycle to close. A plant that has bought one of everything cannot do any of that, because on the day a line changes, the size it suddenly needs forty of is the size it has four of, and the gap gets filled with cardboard within the week.
- Measure the part in the orientation the operator will pick it, then match the inside dimension, never the outside.
- Measure the usable shelf or bench depth, then match the outside length so the bin does not overhang into the gangway.
- Write the code on the purchase order (SB 1, SB 4, SB 7, SB 7X), never a description like small, medium or large.
- Confirm SB 7X separately if you are quoting it, because it is a variant of SB 7 and not the next rung above it.
- Ask for the dimensional drawing before you design any bracket, cut-out or trolley deck around the bin.
SB 1 read in full: what a 125 x 100 x 60 mm bin actually holds
Take Supra bin SB 1 apart arithmetically and it teaches you how to read every other bin in the catalogue. The outside envelope of 125 x 100 x 60 mm occupies 750,000 cubic millimetres of shelf space, or 0.75 litres of air. The inside of 117 x 80 x 52 mm gives 486,720 cubic millimetres, roughly 0.49 litres. That is about 65 per cent of the envelope converted into usable space, with the balance going into wall thickness, the taper that lets the bins nest, and the hopper front that lets a hand in. Sixty-five per cent is a normal and healthy figure for an open-front picking bin, and it is a useful benchmark to hold against anything else you are offered.
Now convert that into shift terms, which is what a production planner actually cares about. Small steel fasteners settle at roughly four to five kilogrammes per litre of bin volume once you allow for the air between them, and no one fills an open-front bin to the brim because the parts spill when the bin is knocked. Fill an SB 1 to about eighty per cent and you are holding around 0.39 litres, which is in the region of 1.7 to 1.9 kg of small steel parts. For an M6 flange nut of roughly three and a half grammes, that is about five hundred pieces. If your cell consumes six hundred a shift, SB 1 is a two-fills-a-shift bin, and you should either step up the ladder or run two bins per part number.
The face-width arithmetic is just as useful. SB 1 presents a 100 mm face, so a nominal one-metre run of louvre panel or rail carries ten of them before clearances, realistically nine in a real installation once you allow for the end stops and a finger gap. Each of those bins projects 125 mm forward. So one metre of Supra SB 1 wall costs you 125 mm of depth and gives you roughly 4.4 to 4.9 litres of picking volume spread across nine or ten distinct part numbers. Distinct part numbers, not litres, is usually the number that matters at an assembly bench, and this is precisely where the small end of the Supra ladder earns its keep.
There is one measurement people forget entirely, and it costs them later: the height above the bin. An open-front bin is only pickable if a hand can enter at an angle, so the clear gap between the top of an SB 1 and the underside of the shelf or rail above it needs to be enough for a gloved hand plus the part. If you set your louvre panel rows at a pitch that just clears the bin, operators will start pulling bins off the wall to fill or pick them, and once a bin comes off the wall it stops going back to the same place.
Supra bin partitions: when to divide the box instead of buying a smaller one
Partitions are the most under-bought accessory in the Supra range, and the most misunderstood. A Supra bin partition drops into the bin and splits it, usually across the width, so that one bin position on the wall holds two or three related items instead of one. The immediate saving is obvious: fewer bins and less rail. The less obvious saving is in walking. If an operator picks a washer, a nut and a split pin at the same station in the same sequence, putting all three into one partitioned SB bin at the same reach height is faster than three bins spread across 300 mm of panel, because the hand travels once and the eye does not have to re-find the position.
The decision rule between a partition and a smaller bin is about replenishment, not about volume. Divide a bin when the items inside it are consumed together in a fixed ratio and are replenished by the same person at the same interval. Buy a smaller bin from further down the ladder when the items have independent consumption or belong to different owners, because a partitioned bin with one empty half and one full half sends a confusing signal to the person doing the round. This is the same reason two-bin kanban breaks when someone partitions the kanban bin: the empty-bin trigger only works if the whole bin empties.
Partitions have physical limits you should respect. They divide the box, they do not strengthen it, and a partition does not turn a bin rated for one duty into a bin rated for more. If you fill both halves of a divided bin with dense steel parts, you have not reduced the load on the bin walls at all, and on a rail-hung installation you have concentrated that load in exactly the same place. Similarly, a partition that is a slightly loose fit will lift out when an operator scoops from the bottom, and then the two part numbers mix. If mixing two of your part numbers would cause a quality escape, use two bins, not one bin with a partition.
One practical note for buyers. Partitions are ordered per bin, per division, and per bin size, so a purchase order that reads only fifty partitions is not orderable. Tell us the Supra code, how many partitions you want in each bin, and whether you want them across the width or along the length, and confirm it against the drawing. We would rather ask three questions on the phone from Vashi than ship a box of the wrong divider to a plant in Nashik or Rajkot and have you wait out another freight cycle.
Louvre panels and the louvre panel stand: giving the bins somewhere to live
A louvre panel is a sheet with a repeated angled slot profile that the hanging lip of the bin hooks into. It is the cleanest way to build a Supra wall because it lets you move any bin to any position without tools, which is what makes the system survive a line change. When a model changes and a station now needs eleven part numbers instead of nine, an operator can re-space the whole row in five minutes. With drilled brackets or a fixed shelf, that same change becomes a maintenance job, and maintenance jobs get postponed until someone puts a carton on the bench instead.
Louvre panels can be wall-mounted, mounted onto a bench back, built into a trolley, or held in a floor-standing louvre panel stand. The stand is the option most Indian plants end up choosing, and for good reason: it needs no drilling into a wall that may be a hollow partition or a rented shed skin, it can be relocated when the layout changes, and it can be double-sided so that two operators work back to back off the same footprint. If you are fitting out a leased unit in a Bhiwandi or Taloja industrial estate, a stand that can be lifted onto a tempo when the lease ends is worth more than a slightly cheaper wall panel.
Sizing the panel run is straightforward arithmetic once you have chosen your bins. Divide the panel width by the bin face width to get bins per row, subtract one for clearance if the panel is exactly a round metre, and multiply by the number of usable rows at that panel height. Set the row pitch from the bin height plus the hand clearance discussed earlier, not from the bin height alone. Then check the total projection: a wall of SB 1 projects 125 mm, but if you mix in bins from further up the ladder on the lower rows, your deepest bin sets the gangway clearance for the whole installation.
When you specify a louvre panel stand, three details decide whether it is right. First, single or double sided, which doubles capacity but also doubles the access you must leave around it. Second, the base footprint and whether it will foul the pallet position or the operator chair that is already there. Third, whether the stand needs floor fixing in your application, and whether that fixing hardware is included, which is not something to assume. Tuff stand combinations, where a stand frame is supplied with a specified set of bins, are convenient for a first installation, but always confirm which bin codes and quantities that particular combination is quoted with before you compare its price with a stand you have specified yourself.
FSS stands and building a Supra station that people actually use
The FSS floor-standing stands are the Supra range's answer to the fact that most Indian shop floors do not have a good wall where the work is. Machines sit in the middle of a bay, sub-assembly happens at moveable benches, and the only real wall is thirty metres away behind the material stack. A stand puts the bins where the hands are. That single change removes more walking from an assembly cell than almost anything else you can buy for the same money, and unlike a conveyor or a rack it can be repositioned by two people in an afternoon.
Position the stand relative to the operator before you decide its size. The bins that are picked most often belong between roughly elbow and shoulder height, directly in front of the operator. Slow-moving items and consumables go on the lowest and highest rows. If you are running a seated station, the whole usable band drops, and a tall stand simply becomes a tall stand with two useful rows. This is the most common reason a well-bought stand disappoints: it was specified by height and bin count rather than by the reach envelope of the person who has to use it every shift.
Mobility is the other decision. A fixed stand is stable and cheap; a stand or trolley on castors follows the work but must be planned around cable trays, floor channels and the door widths it has to pass through. In plants where the same sub-assembly is built at two different stations depending on the schedule, mobile wins clearly. In a plant with an uneven floor or a slope towards a drain, which is common in older sheds around Howrah and in parts of the Ahmedabad and Rajkot engineering belt, a fixed stand with a level base is safer, because a loaded mobile stand on a slope becomes a hazard the day someone lets go of it.
Do not forget the label. A Supra wall with no labels is an unsorted wall within a fortnight, because the moment a bin is emptied and refilled by a person who was not there when it was set up, the location loses its identity. Use the card slot or label holder arrangement in the accessory range, keep the part number and the bin address on the label, and write the bin address on the pick list too. The cost of that discipline is trivial. The cost of not having it is a stores team that cannot answer where a part is without opening bins.
The universal rail AUR-1 and rail-mounted Supra runs
The universal rail is the lightest way to hang Supra bins, and often the most sensible. Instead of a full panel, a rail section is fixed to a bench back, a machine guard frame, a trolley upright or an existing rack beam, and the bins hook onto it. AUR-1 in the accessory listing is the universal rail item, and universal is the operative word: a rail can serve more than one bin family, so a bench can carry a row of Supra bins for fasteners and a row of another range for larger parts without two different mounting systems on the same frame.
Rails suit retrofits better than panels do. If you already have benches, the cost and disruption of adding a rail to the back edge is a fraction of building a panel wall, and the work can be done between shifts. It also lets you add capacity incrementally, one metre at a time, in step with what the line actually needs, instead of buying a full wall on day one and discovering that three of the five rows never get used. For a plant standardising slowly across ten benches in Peenya or Hosur, incremental is usually the right shape of spend.
There are limits to be honest about. A rail carries its load in a line, so whatever it is fixed to has to take that load. Bench backs made from thin sheet, temporary partitions and lightly built guard frames are not automatically suitable, and hollow block walls need the correct anchors rather than plastic plugs. Fix the rail level, check it with a spirit level rather than by eye against a wall that may itself be out of true, and load a filled bin onto the end of the run to test the fixing before you commit the whole row. A rail that sags at one end will let bins walk sideways every time the bench is knocked.
Rail runs also need end discipline, which is the detail most installations get wrong on day one. Leave a deliberate gap at each end rather than filling the rail bin-to-bin, so that an operator can lift a bin off without fighting its two neighbours, and so that there is somewhere to insert a bin when a new part number arrives. Every installation gains a new part number eventually, usually within the first quarter. The rail runs that still look right after a year are the ones that were commissioned with roughly ten per cent of their length deliberately empty, because that empty space absorbs change instead of pushing it onto the bench.
Trolleys, crash carts and taking Supra bins to the job
Not all picking happens at a fixed station. Maintenance teams, line-side replenishment rounds, rework cells and field service vans all need a defined set of parts that travels. A shop floor trolley fitted with louvre panels or rails and loaded with Supra bins turns that into a controlled kit instead of a bag of loose items. The advantage over a toolbox is visibility: an open-front bin shows its contents and its emptiness from two metres away, which is what makes a restocking round quick and honest.
Crash carts in the accessory range are the same idea aimed at response work, where a defined set of items has to reach a breakdown fast and completely. The value comes from fixing the contents and never varying them. Assign every bin position a part number, label it, and audit the cart at a fixed interval rather than after an incident. A cart with three empty positions found during a Tuesday audit is a stores problem; the same three empty positions found at two in the morning during a breakdown is a downtime problem, and the difference between them is the audit.
Loading a mobile Supra unit needs more care than loading a wall. Keep the heaviest bins low and towards the centre of the deck, not on the top row where they raise the centre of gravity and make the trolley want to tip when it crosses a floor joint or a drain channel. Check the bins seat fully on the rail rather than resting on the lip, because vibration over a rough floor will shake a partly seated bin off in a way that a static wall never will. And keep the trolley's overall width under the narrowest door and gangway it must pass, measured, not estimated.
Where Supra beats Hippo, Bull, Rhino and the Tote and Mammoth bins
Comparisons between bin ranges are usually argued on feel. It is more useful to do the arithmetic on the published dimensions, so here are four small bins from four families compared on the same basis. Supra SB 1 at 125 x 100 x 60 mm outside gives an inside volume of about 0.49 litres. Hippo 612/T at 100 x 110 x 53 mm gives about 0.31 litres. Bull Bin 5 at 168 x 102 x 74 mm gives about 0.82 litres. Rhino ARTB-05 at 109 x 104 x 49 mm gives about 0.36 litres. These are gross rectangular volumes calculated from the inside dimensions and they ignore the taper, so use them for comparison rather than as fill figures.
The conversion efficiency is where it gets interesting. SB 1 turns roughly 65 per cent of its outside envelope into usable inside space; Bull Bin 5 does almost exactly the same; Rhino ARTB-05 is a shade over 65 per cent; Hippo 612/T converts about 53 per cent, which is the signature of a bin built for a tighter, more robust duty rather than for maximum capacity. Read against the same yardstick, Tote AK-421 at 400 x 255 x 100 mm converts about 74 per cent into roughly 7.6 litres, and the Mammoth bin at 820 x 315 x 300 mm gives roughly 53 litres. Those last two are not picking bins at all and the numbers show why.
Now apply the constraint that actually decides most purchases, which is depth. Supra SB 1 needs 125 mm of shelf or bench depth for its 0.49 litres. Bull Bin 5 gives you two thirds more volume but needs 168 mm, and per running metre of face it works out to roughly 7.4 litres against Supra's 4.4 to 4.9. If depth is free, Bull wins on volume per metre of rail. If your bench is 200 mm deep behind the work area, or your gangway is already at the minimum, Supra wins because Bull will not fit without stealing aisle. For contrast, a Panda Shelf Bin 301 at 315 x 100 x 60 mm holds about 1.39 litres on the same 100 mm face, but it demands 315 mm of shelf depth, which is a completely different kind of installation.
So the honest summary is this. Choose Supra when you need many part numbers within arm's reach in a shallow envelope, with the widest accessory support for partitions, panels, stands, rails and trolleys. Choose the Hippo family when the footprint is tighter and the duty is rougher, the Bull range when volume per bin matters more than depth, and Rhino Tuff bins in the ARTB series when the handling is genuinely hard. Choose Tote or Mammoth when the job is moving material rather than picking it. If you want the four picking families set side by side in one place, our range comparison covers it, and the overview of what we supply as an industrial storage bins manufacturer in India explains how the nine ranges divide up the work.
- Supra SB 1: 125 x 100 x 60 mm outside, about 0.49 litres inside, about 65 per cent envelope efficiency, 125 mm projection.
- Hippo 612/T: 100 x 110 x 53 mm outside, about 0.31 litres inside, about 53 per cent efficiency, smallest footprint of the four.
- Bull Bin 5: 168 x 102 x 74 mm outside, about 0.82 litres inside, most volume per metre of rail but needs 168 mm of depth.
- Rhino ARTB-05: 109 x 104 x 49 mm outside, about 0.36 litres inside, the shallowest height of the four at 49 mm.
- Rule of thumb: shallow bench and many part numbers means Supra; deep shelf and fewer, bulkier items means Bull or Panda.
Material, temperature and chemical limits you must design around
Every bin range in the catalogue, Supra included, is moulded in polypropylene copolymer, carries resin identification code 05, and is marked food-safe and recyclable. The stated service range is minus 10 C to plus 70 C. Those four facts settle a surprising number of questions before they are asked, and they also set boundaries that no amount of careful handling will move. Polypropylene copolymer is chosen for this duty because it takes repeated knocks without cracking the way a rigid material would, and because it is light enough that a full bin can still be lifted onto a rail one-handed.
The upper limit is the one that catches people out. Seventy degrees Celsius is not a failure point, it is the top of the service range, and polypropylene softens and creeps well before it visibly deforms. A bin holding two kilogrammes of steel parts at fifty-five degrees for eight hours behaves differently from the same bin at twenty-eight degrees. That matters in practice at three places: components coming out of a curing oven or a hot wash and dumped straight into a bin, bins parked against a furnace wall or a compressor, and bins stored in an uninsulated shed roof space through a Nagpur or Ahmedabad summer. Let parts cool to handling temperature first, keep bins out of radiant heat, and do not steam-clean them.
The lower limit matters less often but matters absolutely when it applies. Below minus 10 C polypropylene becomes progressively more brittle and impact resistance falls away, so a bin that shrugs off a knock at ambient can crack from the same knock in a freezer store. If your application is cold chain, dairy, frozen food or a low-temperature test chamber, say so at enquiry stage. Chemically, polypropylene tolerates most aqueous solutions, dilute acids and alkalis and many oils, but chlorinated and aromatic solvents are a different matter, especially warm. If your parts arrive wet with a process chemical, the sensible course is to take one bin, expose it in your own conditions for a few weeks, and look at it before you order five hundred.
One limit is not about the plastic at all. Standard Supra bins in polypropylene are electrically insulating, which means they are not suitable for handling electrostatic-sensitive devices. For electronics assembly and EMS work of the kind concentrated around Bengaluru, Chennai and the Noida belt, use the ESD and conductive safe products in the catalogue rather than a standard bin with an added strap or a spray treatment. This is not an upsell; it is the one substitution where using the wrong range produces damage you cannot see at the point it happens, and will only find at final test or in the field.
A worked example: sizing a Supra wall for a fourteen-part assembly cell
Take a real-shaped problem. An assembly cell builds three hundred units a shift and consumes fourteen small part numbers, of which four are fasteners in high volume, six are small pressed and turned components, and four are slow-moving service items used on perhaps one build in twenty. The bench is 1800 mm long, with 220 mm of usable depth behind the work area before the operator's working zone begins. The team wants two-bin replenishment so that an empty bin is the signal to refill, without anyone counting anything.
Start with the fasteners, because they set the size. The M6 flange nut from the earlier calculation consumes six hundred pieces a shift and an SB 1 filled to eighty per cent holds around five hundred. In a two-bin system each bin should ideally cover the replenishment interval with margin, so SB 1 forces a mid-shift round for that part alone. Step that part number up the ladder to a larger Supra code and the round disappears; keep the other three fasteners, which run at a quarter of that rate, on SB 1 pairs. This is the whole point of a fine size ladder: you fix the one part that breaks the round rather than oversizing all fourteen.
Now count positions. Fourteen part numbers in a two-bin system is twenty-eight bin positions, plus the ten per cent of deliberate empty space discussed earlier, so call it thirty-one positions. At a 100 mm face, thirty-one positions is 3100 mm of rail. The bench gives 1800 mm per row, so two rows nearly do it and three rows give comfortable headroom, with the four slow-moving service items placed on the top row where reach is worst and frequency is lowest. Depth is the check that decides feasibility: 125 mm of projection for SB 1 against 220 mm available is fine, but if you had specified a Bull Bin 5 at 168 mm for the same job you would have been within 52 mm of the operator's working zone.
Finally, decide the carrier. Three rows across 1800 mm of bench back is a natural rail installation using universal rail sections rather than a panel, because the bench already exists and rails can be added between shifts. If the same cell is built at two different benches depending on the schedule, put the whole arrangement on a louvre panel trolley instead and move the parts with the work. Either way, label every position, write the bin address on the pick list, and photograph the finished wall so that the correct state is documented for the next audit.
Failure modes we see, and how to keep a Supra installation alive
The first failure is overfilling. An open-front bin that is filled above the front lip spills every time it is knocked, and a small bin filled with dense metal parts loads its walls and its hanging lip far harder than the same bin holding plastic clips. If a bin is bowing at the sides or the hanging lip has started to open out, the answer is a larger code or a heavier range, not a stricter instruction to the operator. Do not guess load ratings; take the figure from the catalogue sheet for the specific code, and ask us if the sheet is not in front of you.
The second is bad fixing. Rails and panels fixed into hollow blockwork with the wrong plug, or into a thin bench back that flexes, will hold up fine while empty and fail progressively once loaded and knocked. Check the rail is level with an instrument, load-test the end of the run before committing the whole row, and re-check the fixings a month after commissioning, because that is when a marginal fixing declares itself. The third is environmental: bins parked in the sun on a loading dock, on a rooftop landing or beside a heat source. Unless a sheet specifically says a product is UV-stabilised, assume it is not, and keep bins out of prolonged direct sunlight.
The fourth is cleaning done badly. Polypropylene copolymer washes easily with warm water and a mild detergent, and that is all most bins ever need. Avoid hot degreasers and steam above the seventy-degree service limit, avoid chlorinated and aromatic solvents, and avoid scouring with anything that will score the inside surface, because scratches hold oil and swarf and make the next clean harder. Air-dry bins fully before they go back on the wall, especially if the parts they hold are unplated steel and your plant is in a coastal humidity band like Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Chennai or Kochi.
The fifth failure is organisational rather than physical, and it is the one that kills most installations. Bins get moved, labels fall off, someone stores an unrelated item in an empty position, and within two months nobody trusts the wall. Fix this with three habits: every position has a printed label, every new part number gets an assigned position before its first delivery arrives, and someone walks the wall once a week against a list. A Supra installation is cheap to buy and cheap to maintain; what it cannot survive is being nobody's job.
- Bin bowing or a splayed hanging lip means the wrong size or wrong range, not a training problem.
- Load-test the end of a new rail run with a filled bin before you fill the whole row.
- Keep bins out of direct sunlight and away from ovens, furnaces and compressor exhaust.
- Wash with warm water and mild detergent only; no steam, no chlorinated solvents, no scouring.
- Audit the wall weekly against a position list, and assign a position to every new part number before it arrives.
Buying Alkon Supra bins in India: specification, stock and supply from Vashi
A Supra enquiry becomes a clean order when it carries five things: the bin codes with quantities per code, the colour, the partition requirement per bin, the carrier you intend to use with its model reference, and the delivery address with an unloading contact. Quantities matter more than buyers expect, because bins are light and bulky and freight is charged on the space they occupy. Consolidating a plant's requirement into one despatch rather than four monthly top-ups usually saves more than any discount you will negotiate on the bins themselves, and it also means the whole installation goes up in one day instead of appearing in pieces.
Our position in the chain is straightforward. ALKON Plastics Pvt. Ltd. manufactures, and Shreeram Metafusion Engineers Pvt. Ltd. has been an authorised stockist for over thirty years, working from Sector 17, Vashi in Navi Mumbai. Being in Vashi puts us next to the container and warehousing corridor around JNPT and the MIDC estates at Rabale, Turbhe and Taloja, with the Pune, Nashik and Aurangabad belts up the expressway and highway. Dispatches to Gujarat's engineering clusters around Ahmedabad and Rajkot, to Coimbatore and Chennai in Tamil Nadu, to Bengaluru and Hyderabad, to Kolkata, and to the Delhi NCR belt around Faridabad and Manesar, all run from the same stock.
Before a large rollout, take a sample. One bin of the code you intend to standardise on, held in the actual cell with the actual parts for a fortnight, will tell you more than any specification sheet about whether the inside dimension suits the part, whether the reach height is right and whether the operator picks from it willingly. It is a small step that has changed the final order in a good number of cases, usually by one rung up or down the ladder, and that one rung is the difference between a bin wall people use and a bin wall people work around.
To discuss a requirement, reach us on 93266 29967 or 98201 01937, or write to enquiry@shreeram-metafusion.com. The shop at Shop-1, Gagangiri CHS, Sector 17, Vashi, Navi Mumbai 400703 is open Monday to Saturday, 10:00 to 19:00. Send a layout sketch or a photograph of the bench and the parts along with your enquiry; a picture of the actual station usually saves a week of correspondence, and it lets us tell you honestly when a Supra bin is not the right answer and something else in the catalogue is.
Frequently asked questions
What sizes are available in the Alkon Supra bin range?
The Supra range runs as a numbered ladder from SB 1 through SB 8, with SB 7X listed alongside SB 7 as a variant of that rung rather than an additional step. SB 1, the smallest, measures 125 x 100 x 60 mm outside with an inside of 117 x 80 x 52 mm. Rather than working from a remembered size, take the outside and inside figures for each step from the catalogue dimension sheet on our downloads page, and always place the order against the code. Describing a bin as small or medium on a purchase order is the single most common cause of a wrong delivery, because every range in the catalogue has a small.
How much does a Supra bin SB 1 actually hold in practice?
The inside dimensions of 117 x 80 x 52 mm give a gross volume of about 0.49 litres, but nobody fills an open-front picking bin to the brim because the contents spill when it is knocked. Filled to a realistic eighty per cent you are holding roughly 0.39 litres. For small steel fasteners, which settle at around four to five kilogrammes per litre once you allow for the air between them, that is somewhere near 1.7 to 1.9 kg, or about five hundred M6 flange nuts. If your line consumes more than that in a shift, step up the Supra ladder or run two bins per part number rather than accepting a mid-shift refill round.
Should I use Supra bin partitions or simply order a smaller bin?
Divide a bin with a partition when the items inside it are consumed together in a fixed ratio and refilled by the same person on the same round, because putting them at one reach position genuinely saves hand travel. Order a smaller Supra code instead when the items have independent consumption, belong to different owners, or where mixing them would create a quality risk, since a partition that lifts out during a bottom scoop will let two part numbers mix. Remember that partitions divide the box but do not strengthen it, and that they must be ordered per bin, per division and per bin size, so tell us the bin code and the divisions you want.
What is the difference between a louvre panel and a louvre panel stand?
A louvre panel is the slotted sheet that the bins hook onto; it can be fixed to a wall, a bench back, a rack frame or a trolley. A louvre panel stand is a floor-standing frame that carries the panel without any drilling, and it can be single or double sided. The stand is usually the better choice in leased units, in sheds with hollow or unreliable walls, and wherever a layout is likely to change, because it can be relocated by two people. When you specify a stand, confirm whether it is single or double sided, check the base footprint against the pallet position and operator chair already there, and confirm whether floor fixing hardware is included.
What is the universal rail AUR-1 used for?
The universal rail is a light mounting section fixed to a bench back, a machine guard frame, a trolley upright or an existing rack beam, so that bins hang from it without needing a full panel. It is the most economical way to retrofit bin storage to benches you already own, and it lets you add capacity a metre at a time rather than committing to a whole wall. Because it is universal, one rail arrangement can serve more than one bin family on the same frame. The constraint is structural: whatever the rail is fixed to has to take the loaded weight, so use correct anchors, set it level with an instrument, and load-test the end of the run before filling the whole row.
Are Alkon Supra bins ESD safe for electronics assembly?
No. Standard Supra bins are moulded in polypropylene copolymer, which is electrically insulating, so they are not suitable for handling electrostatic-sensitive devices. For electronics assembly and EMS work, use the ESD and conductive safe products listed separately in the catalogue rather than adapting a standard bin with a strap or a surface treatment. This is the one substitution where using the wrong range causes damage that is invisible at the moment it happens and only surfaces at final test or, worse, in the field. Tell us at enquiry stage if the parts are ESD sensitive and we will quote from the correct range.
What temperatures and chemicals can Supra bins handle?
All bin ranges in the catalogue, Supra included, are moulded polypropylene copolymer with resin identification code 05 and a stated service range of minus 10 C to plus 70 C, carrying food-safe and recyclable marks. Treat 70 C as the top of the range, not a failure point, because polypropylene softens and creeps as it approaches it, particularly under sustained load. Let hot parts cool before binning them, keep bins away from ovens, furnaces and direct sun, and do not steam-clean. Below minus 10 C the material becomes progressively brittle, so declare cold-store use at enquiry. Polypropylene tolerates most aqueous solutions, dilute acids and alkalis and many oils, but test a sample if your parts carry solvents.
How do I place an order and is stock held in Mumbai?
Shreeram Metafusion Engineers Pvt. Ltd. has been an authorised stockist of ALKON Plastics Pvt. Ltd. for over thirty years and supplies from Shop-1, Gagangiri CHS, Sector 17, Vashi, Navi Mumbai 400703, open Monday to Saturday, 10:00 to 19:00. Send your bin codes with quantities, colour, partitions per bin, the carrier you intend to use, and the delivery address with an unloading contact. Because bins are light and bulky, consolidating a plant's requirement into a single despatch usually saves more than any negotiation on the bins themselves. Call 93266 29967 or 98201 01937, or write to enquiry@shreeram-metafusion.com, and send a photograph of the bench and the parts with the enquiry.
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