Case Study 10 - Stretch Film Lightweighting At A French Food Wholesaler
This customer is France’s leading food wholesaler. They supply approximately 338,000 catering businesses and 83,000 independent retailers. It operates from 132 branches throughout France and operates a national delivery service.
In order to replenish its business, they pick and palletize mixed loads for distribution to its 132 branches. Picked orders are palletized and stretch wrapped in order to ensure safe delivery of product.
Annually, the customer distributes over 1,000,000 pallets in this way.
A recent initiative reduced total stretch film consumption from 315 tons p.a. to 130 tons p.a. yielding a film saving of 59%.
Challenge
The consumption of stretch film was high and the cost considerable.
Our distributor’s customer wanted to be more efficient in its use of tertiary packaging whilst maintaining pallet load integrity.
They wanted to reduce cost and environmental impact.
Solution
The company manually stretch wraps (hand wrap) 1,039,539 mixed product pallets for distribution from their regional distribution centers to their 172 branches. Each pallet load dispatched is wrapped using between 10 and 12 complete wraps of stretch film per pallet. The wrapping pattern is twice around the base of the load, 6 to 8 wraps (load height dependent) up the load with 50% overlap and twice around the top. The film is applied manually using extended core 400mm wide hand wrap.
Prior to the initiative the company were using 17μm stretch film. Our customer discussed opportunities for improving film efficiency and they tested the same film but pre-stretched by approximately 300%. All other wrapping parameters remained the same. The resulting film was reduced in thickness to 7μm, whilst retaining its tensile strength.
Results
- A REDUCTION IN AVERAGE FILM USAGE PER PALLET FROM 303G TO 125G
- A REDUCTION IN ANNUAL FILM CONSUMPTION FROM 315T TO 130T
- CARBON EMISSION REDUCTIONS OF 500T P.A.
- GREATER THAN 50% SAVING IN FILM COST; AND
- IMPROVED LOAD CONSOLIDATION
