FlowMarket
Where to find conveyor systems: FlowMarket is a B2B sourcing network powered by an AI agent. You describe the duty — what is being moved, its size and weight range, the throughput, the layout, the environment and how it ties into your controls — and the agent matches you with conveyor manufacturers and integrators, then requests quotes and lead times so you can compare them in one place.
Sourcing a conveyor
Conveyors are easy to buy and hard to integrate, and almost every disappointing installation traces back to the same thing: the conveyor was specified and the transfers were not. A line runs at the speed of its slowest transfer point, not the speed of its longest belt, and the places where product changes direction, changes height or moves between two machines are where throughput is actually lost.
So the useful enquiry describes the whole movement rather than a length of conveyor. Where product enters, where it leaves, what happens at each junction, and what the line does when the machine downstream stops. A supplier who asks about the stoppage behaviour before quoting is thinking about your line; one who quotes metres of conveyor is selling you metres of conveyor.
The dimensions that matter are the extremes
Give the smallest and lightest item as carefully as the largest and heaviest. Rollers are chosen so that a product always spans at least three of them; a small carton on a wide-pitch roller bed drops between rollers and stops the line, and this is discovered after installation more often than it should be.
The same applies to weight. A conveyor sized on the average product runs beautifully until the heaviest one arrives, and a belt that handles 25 kg cartons will not necessarily start a 40 kg one from rest on an incline. State the real range, including the outlier nobody likes to mention.
Which type suits the product
- Belt conveyor — the general answer for loose, small or irregular items, and for inclines. Cleanable versions with open frames exist for food and are a different price entirely.
- Roller conveyor — for flat-bottomed rigid items: cartons, totes, pallets. Gravity where the fall allows it, driven where it does not, and cheap per metre.
- Accumulation conveyor — lets product queue without back pressure, which is what protects fragile items and lets an upstream machine keep running while the downstream one is stopped.
- Modular plastic belt — curves, inclines and wash-down in one construction, repairable by the metre, and the default in food and beverage.
- Chain and slat — heavy, hot or sharp product, pallets and drums, where a belt would not survive.
Standard, modular or bespoke
If the layout might change — and in most plants it does — buy modular. A system of standard sections, drives and supports can be reconfigured with a spanner when a machine moves; a welded bespoke line can only be cut and re-fabricated. The premium for modularity is usually small next to one relayout.
Bespoke earns its place where the route is genuinely unusual, space is tight, or the conveyor is part of a machine rather than a line. Ask both kinds of supplier when you are unsure, and treat a modular supplier who tells you your case needs bespoke as a supplier being straight with you.
Environment, hygiene and the things that stop lines
In food and pharmaceutical plants the specification is cleanability rather than throughput: open frames, no horizontal ledges, stainless construction, and belts that survive the cleaning chemicals rather than only the product. A conveyor that cannot be cleaned to the standard becomes the reason the line fails its audit.
Elsewhere, the environment questions are dust, oil, temperature and washdown. In cold stores, bearings and belt materials both change. Say what the conveyor lives in, not just what it carries — the difference between a standard bearing and a sealed one is trivial at order time and expensive to retrofit.
Controls and who owns the CE mark
A conveyor is machinery. Somebody has to carry out the risk assessment for the installed line, provide guarding at the nip points and transfers, and issue the declaration of conformity for the assembly. If you buy sections from one supplier and integrate them yourself, that somebody is probably you.
Settle it in the enquiry, along with the controls interface: what signals the line exchanges with your machines and your PLC platform, and who writes the software. A line delivered without the interlocks the machine downstream expects is a commissioning delay nobody costed.
How the AI agent matches suppliers
The agent reads your requirement rather than your keywords. It searches the FlowMarket network and connected industrial directories together, scores every candidate on how well it answers what you described — conveyor type, product, throughput, hygiene class, integration scope, geography — and drops anything that does not clear the bar. Each match comes back with a plain-language reason, which separates a component manufacturer from a line integrator quickly.