Its taken 20 years, but Specialised Packaging has gone full circle, back to designing and manufacturing heavy duty corrugated cardboard packaging. There had been a few big steps along the way, significantly a move from the northern beaches of Sydney to Wagga Wagga in rural NSW earlier this year.
Regular cardboard boxes and cartons make up the bulk of production at the moment, but new large format machinery from the likes of Gopfert and Bahmuller has provided great capability and flexibility to produce integrated packaging systems, specifically for export.
Most of the current projects involve developing integrated packaging systems for Specialised Packaging clients. The key idea is combining large shipping boxes and pallets into a single unit. That product might be described as an intermediate bulk container, certainly nothing new in itself. However, the aim of the project is usually much broader, trying to create a transport packaging system designed around the product itself, and then streamlined to suit transport modes, as opposed to a system designed to suit the mode of transport.
Specialised Packaging sees the need for a holistic approach to supply chain packaging solutions; it makes cardboard boxes, plastic pallets and everything in between. Manufacturing its own pallet has been a large stepping stone to designing integrated packaging systems for Specialised Packaging clients. Some of Specialised Packaging units do not need palletising because it is incorporated into the design.
A typical system might comprise a cardboard IBC, with dividers and shipping cartons to suit. The units are light, reusable, and collapsible to reduce freight costs, while large openings enable the unit to be easily filled. They are recyclable at the end of their life.
Specialised Packaging is developing standard units to suit Australian domestic logistics as well as standard export units, though there is always scope to modify the design to suit the product.