Ensuring your packaging serves to optimally house your stored and transported products requires some thought. Beyond price and availability, there are numerous vital points to consider to ensure your consumable and transit packaging is performing optimally for your business.
To help you along the way, here are some key factors to consider when analysing the effectiveness of your packaging.
Minimising storage requirements
If your warehouse is experiencing continued growth and facing challenges in adequately storing packaging, there are a number of points to consider.
Is your packaging design optimised to provide transportability and item protection without sacrificing on size and bulkiness? If the answer’s no, it may be time to assess its performance.
Innovations such as the Oxbox™ single wall carton serve to deliver maximum performance with reduced material use and, subsequently, decreased costs and storage requirements, using an innovative fluting design to offer the same performance benefits as a double wall box. Find out more.
In the midst a period fraught with price hikes for raw materials, it can be tempting to ringfence larger packaging quantities to safeguard against future shortages and ensure continued operational viability during peak periods. The inevitable consequence of increasing order quantities, though, is the resultant storage demands and logistical issues for warehouse operations.
Depending on the terms of your order, your supplier may require minimum order quantities, which can prove problematic on numerous fronts, both in terms of packaging spend and storage needs.
If minimum order quantities are necessary, negotiating a stockholding agreement may be a viable option, wherein distributors agree to house your packaging and deliver product when required, reducing the potential risk of reduced storage space for your goods.
Speeding up packing times
We’ve all heard the old adage ‘time is money’. When it comes to packaging, it can be tempting to stick with traditional ideas to minimise risk and prevent waste.
Fortunately, simple, high-performance packaging alternatives can be integrated into conventional packing lines with ease, vastly reducing fulfilment times, cutting waste and aggregating packaging requirements for easy order fulfilment.
The Boomerang™ Rapid Return carton maximises efficiency whilst removing several steps of the packing processes, harnessing the speed and convenience of a crash-lock base, corrugated tabs and peel and seal strips to ensure pack times are reduced by up to 50%.
Better still, the Boomerang™ carton allows for simple opening and re-sealing, letting your customers return products with minimal fuss.
We’ve numerous eco-friendly void fill options that are designed with ease of use and maximum efficiency in mind. See our PAPERplus® void fill systems, biofil™ loose fill and BoxFill™.
Reducing transport costs
Bulky, oversized packaging is not just a storage and budget issue; using ill-suiting cartons and overpacking your products could be producing undue transport expenses, owing to increased void occupying your pallet space in transit and increased load weight, leading to heightened fleet and carrier costs.
To reduce your packing sizes, consider integrating void fill-free solutions into your order fulfilment, such as the Boxwrap™ bookwrap and the Insuremail™ Premium bubble-lined envelope.
Optimising packing through process intelligence
Identifying means to improve process flow can be a vital step in ensuring an efficient, scalable packing operation, and by consolidating storage and waste disposal points into your setup, fulfilment times can be drastically reduced.
From consultation and design through to pre-production and fitting, Allpack can both retrofit new solutions and design bespoke station layouts to meet your exact needs, accounting for modularity of features, build dimensions and budget. Learn more.
For high volume applications, automated box erectors and filling machines can prove highly effective in decreasing pack times and reducing avoidable waste, allowing for more accurate assessment of your packaging use to better ready your business for peak periods.
By incorporating box erectors and filling units in your pack lines, your operation can redirect staffing to other manual processes, drastically reducing fulfilment times and allowing for more consistent, reliable service levels.
Looking to incorporate automated systems into your operation? We can help to prepare your business for growth with high-performance solutions. Contact us today.