Konstantin Glushenkov: "Corrugated packaging is not just a wrapper"
Under present economic conditions, Corrugated packaging is not only a wrapper. Konstantin Glushenkov, the Director of the Customer Experience Management Department, has given a glimpse, at the 17th All-Russian forum Innovative Technologies and Equipment in the Dairy Industry, about how a dairy plant can increase productivity and reduce costs using packaging solutions. The forum was held as part of the business program of the 27th international exhibition for equipment, technologies, raw materials and ingredients for the food processing industry AGROPRODMASH -2022, which was held from October 10 to 14 at Expocentre Fairgrounds.
"After high growth rates in the first quarter and a failure in the second, the situation in the corrugated cardboard packaging market is showing signs of stabilization. Starting from July, production indicators are closely approaching the values of the previous year and, taking into account the economic indicators predicted for the second half of the year, two scenarios are possible: a baseline scenario with a return to the level of last year or a slight increase to 2% and a moderately negative one with a decrease in production volumes to - 3%.
The situation in the first half of the year required manufacturers of various categories of goods not only urgently replace raw materials that have become unavailable, including some types of packaging, but also to introduce new products, brands, and increase production volumes of some types of products. All this has caused a change in supply chains, which lead not only to an increase in production and logistics costs, but also often entail changes in the life cycle of packaging, which can create additional risks for packaging consumers and lead to tangible losses. Thus, according to the statistics of the North American Association of Manufacturers of Fiberboard and Packaging (Fibre Box), from 10% to 15% of product damage occurs due to a mismatch in the strength properties of the packaging. Up to 12% of product damage occurs due to discrepancy between the shape (design) of the package and the packaged product. And up to 43% of the losses are due to poor quality of laying in the vehicle and incorrectly calculated distance of dispatch. Therefore, any changes to the product and its operating conditions require a review of the packaging solution.
Most commonly, minor changes are required to optimize the packaging solution, for example, optimization of the structural design, raw material composition or product offering. And the result of such changes is a reduction in production and logistics costs, a guarantee of product safety with optimal material consumption and an improved selling ability of SRP/RRP solutions.
What can we expect from packaging optimization?
The projects implemented in Gotek Group show that the cost savings associated with the supply of packaging and finished products can reach 30%. Due to design changes, it is possible to achieve an increase in production volumes, reduction of inefficient operations, release of production and warehouse areas where pre-assembly of packaging was previously carried out. For companies focused on sustainable development, this also allows talking about reducing the negative impact on the environment.
By virtue of a detailed study of the packaging life cycle, modeling of optimal packaging parameters at the design stage and verification of design parameters using simulation tests, Gotek Group creates packaging solutions that allow optimizing both direct costs and becoming a source of increasing the efficiency of the supply chain."