Carton Packaging Machinery - Elimination of Expensive Void Fill Materials

The small carton delivery market is booming due to the increased business created by on line and catalogue sales

for both B2B and B2C clients. This has resulted in increased requirement for void fill materials such as Kraft Paper, Air Bags or "peanuts"

SAVOYE Carton Packaging Machines

All have their own merits for supposedly "protecting" the product in transit but do they really provide value for money and are they actually required?

If the process is stripped back to the basics then the majority of products that are dispatched are already protected to a certain extent by the manufacturers packaging. Further protection is afforded by the dispatch carton itself so is the addition of void fill economically and environmentally necessary?

A major European Office Products company thinks not.

They started in a small way by removing void fill from cartons dispatched from only one of their numerousEuropean DC's and to their surprise found no increase in customer reportable complaints for damage to product or in returned goods.

Void fill is no longer added to their 50,000+ cartons which are dispatched on a daily basis.

How where they able to do this?
They realized that the protection afforded by the manufactures packaging and the carton was sufficient, provided that the dispatch carton was of a good quality and strength - their existing process meant that products sat directly on the carton base with no void fill under them and were therefore not protected by the void fill material which was manually added to the top of each carton. Basically they realized that they were only inserting void fill into their cartons so that the carrier could stack them 10 or 20 high without damaging the carton.

SAVOYE PAC600 Box System

The carton that provided this increased strength - up to 40% when compared with standard RSC - is the SAVOYE PAC600 SYSTEM. A 3 piece carton consisting of Sleeve, Base and Lid erected on fully automatic machines, at up to 20 / min, using Hot Melt technology and providing tamper evident distribution.

To further enhance the process and reduce the movement of products within the cartons to a minimum they alsoinvested in the new SAVOYE JIVARO machine. This innovative carton closing equipment automatically measures the fill of the carton, cuts, scores and folds the excess corrugate inwards to limit the movement of product within the carton thus negating the risk of damage. A lid is then automatically applied to the carton which is ready for dispatch.

Throughput is 14 cartons / min and provided that the system layout permits up to 3 machines can be comfortably operated by 1 person whose role it is to ensure that blank lid and hot melt adhesive levels are maintained to the requisite levels

SAVOYE JIVARO Packaging Machine

With the imminent introduction of paying for carton distribution by size and not just per carton the added advantage from JIVARO is the reduction of up to 30% in shipping volumes, resulting in both significant financial savings and environmental savings, by reducing the number of trucks and vans required to deliver the products.

So is elimination of Void Fill Viable?
This Office Products distribution company is proof that it is:
An ROI under 15 months due to savings in:

• Corrugated Costs
• Labour
• Increased throughput
• Transportation costs
• Elimination of Void Fill

Other sectors who have also successfully applied this technology to their distribution processes include:

• E-Business
• Apparel
• Pharmaceutical
• Office Products
• Books
• Multi-Media
• Electronics etc.........