Case Study 9 - Reduction of Cost Per Pallet Wrapped And Improved Load Stability At A Feedstock Food Manufacturer In Western Australia
The client is a market leader in Australia in the animal feed sector. They are an Xforce™ fiber-reinforced film Customer since its launch in February 2018.
They pack animal feed for various livestock animals into 20-25kg polyethylene bags, loading them on to a pallet, with each pallet weighing up to 1200kg. They distribute anywhere between 100—300 pallets per day, to farms around Australia.
Challenge
The fine material from the animal feed can sometimes coat the bags, which makes the polythene quite slippery. As well as that, a lot of the farms are in very rural locations so the roads are not always flat.
To ensure the load arrived safely, they often needed to double wrap their pallets which massively increased the cost.
Making sure the stretch film is strong enough to hold 1.2 tonnes of slippery bags on uneven roads, whilst trying to reduce the amount of film used and reduce costs. This would be impossible for most stretch film suppliers.
Solution
Respack studied the current film in terms of weight and cost to wrap one pallet as well as the load retention characteristics achievable with this film. Then we went to work with Xforce.
Results
The overall saving to this site is in excess of AUD 8000 per year and the pallets now go out better and more protected than ever. Due to the unique characteristics of the various grades of Xforce we were able to increase load holding by 27%, whilst decreasing the cost of one pallet by 13% based on a single wrap. The single wrap load holding is now so good that our client no longer needs to double wrap the pallets, with a massive 56.5% cost saving compared to a double wrapped pallet.
- ESTIMATED AUD$ 8000 ANNUAL SAVING
- 27% INCREASED LOAD HOLDING
- 56.5% REDUCTION OF COST PER PALLET
- IMPROVED PACKAGING AND OUTPUT
