All manufacturing companies need packaging for transportation, storage and protection of their products. With that said, when these companies begin to count their total money spent on transport packaging (handling, packing, materials, warehouse space, etc) this is when they come up with the idea to compare packaging alternatives. This is also the time when they strongly realize the advantages of going with a collapsible packaging solution.
Foldable packaging has countless advantages:
Savings in transportation cost
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Usually industrial manufacturers do not produce the packaging themselves so they have to buy it from packaging companies paying the transportation cost (in one way or the other). Nowadays, transportation costs are one of the biggest company expenditures. When a package is shipped fully assembled with no products inside, you are essentially paying to ship air, the product in this case inside of the outer packaging.. sounds crazy doesn’t it!! We agree!
For Example:
To put it in figures (see the chart below), suppose we have a usual non-collapsible wooden crate and a foldable Nefab ExPak with the same inner dimensions (1180x780x1000). For transportation of 100 wooden crates 22,5 lm (loading meter) are needed which makes 2 standard Euro trucks while 100 Nefab ExPak’s take only 6 lm of the truck space which is not even a half! If the price for 1 lm is the same in both cases then by doing some easy number crunching we get that transportation of 100 wooden crates is 3, 75 times more expensive than for foldable Nefab ExPak’s.
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Foldable
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Non-Foldable
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Inner Dimensions
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1180 x 780 x 1000
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1180 x 780 x 1000
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Quantity Shipped
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100
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100
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Outer Dimensions
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1200 x 800 x 1150
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1260 x 860 x 1200
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Loading Meters Needed
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6
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22.5
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Freight Cost (x = 1 lm)
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6x
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22.5x
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Savings in warehouse space.
On average a foldable packaging solution saves up to 50 % of the warehouse space. This allows for additional floor space, for core products, and potentially increasing production volumes (if needed) due to the optimised space utilization.
Savings on handling-loading and unloading cost.
Having a foldable packaging solution allows to reduce significantly the time needed for loading and unloading of the packaging, which saves man/hours and of course the total costs as well.
Returnable Packaging
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Usually returnable packaging is foldable, which gives it additional advantages compared to one-way nonfoldable solutions. For additional information see our section “Why returnable packaging”.
Additional things to consider (
in case the interest rate for capital tied up allows having a larger stock of packaging material):
Better price for packaging.
Suppose you have certain space in your warehouse to store the packaging. Going for foldable solutions allows ordering larger quantities of packaging, as it can be stored in a more efficient way. Having larger orders allows negotiating better prices which means you should spend even less on packaging (having all the rest of conditions unchanged)!
More flexible production process
.
A bigger stock of packaging (with the same warehouse cost) allows for ‘backup’ or ‘just in case’ packaging in the event needs or production volumes fluctuate. This strongly supports a company’s image and gives more security on required delivery terms.