OPENER APPARATUS

An opener apparatus that accommodates and opens a substrate carrier stack of substrate carriers stacked in a vertical direction, includes a movement mechanism that moves all of the substrate carriers or a sub-group of the substrate carriers relatively with respect to each other along a vertical axis in an opening operation to assume an unstacked state and to be positioned at defined vertical opened positions within the opener apparatus with vertical distances between vertically adjacent substrate carriers in the unstacked state. The opener apparatus also moves the substrate carriers in the unstacked state relatively with respect to each other along the vertical axis in a closing operation to reassume a stacked state.