Smurfit Kappa: Every 4th truck with packaging material is saved

The German company Pelipal, headquartered in Schlangen (East Westphalia), is a leading European manufacturer of bathroom furniture and mirror cabinets, which are sold as high-quality designer fittings as well as take-away furniture. For the packaging of the current product range, an optimised cardboard packaging material was sought. It is to be processed on an existing continuous packaging machine with the least amount of material. Together with the packaging specialist Smurfit Kappa, a solution was developed that relieves both Pelipal and the end customers and brings significant efficiency advantages in various work areas and saves every 4th truck with packaging material.

The success story of the Pelipal Group began in 1906 with the founding of a construction and furniture joinery. Today, the group has around 550 employees at its headquarters and at another state-of-the-art production site in Eisenberg (Thuringia) and has an international sales network with branches and partners in 15 countries. Pelipal offers a wide range of bathroom solutions from affordable value for money to high-quality, multi-award-winning luxury design bathrooms that appeal to a wide variety of target groups. In addition to the furniture trade, Pelipal's sales channels also include the DIY and online trade sectors as well as the sanitary trade.

"Smurfit Kappa has worked with us to further develop and consistently optimise the packaging".

For the plant in Eisenberg, where the take-away furniture is produced, there was a need for an optimised packaging solution. To this end, production manager Ulrich Henning consulted closely with the company Smurfit Kappa, which had already designed the first continuous-process packaging machine for Pelipal some 15 years ago. "Smurfit Kappa worked with us to further develop and consistently optimise the packaging," says Ulrich Henning, looking back on the 20 years of cooperation. "Whereas in the beginning we needed a storage area of 900m2 for more than 500 different cardboard boxes and blanks, today it is only 300m2 of storage area that has to be provided for the packaging machine."

Smurfit Kappa is not only a manufacturer of packaging material made of paper and cardboard, but also offers holistic customer advice on packaging and machine concepts. In this way, customers such as Pelipal receive a comprehensive recommendation on the perfect interplay between the board cutting machine and the most suitable packaging material and the associated logistics.

In order to meet Pelipal's updated product portfolio in Eisenberg and the need for a high cycle rate with maximum flexibility in terms of packaging shapes and sizes, Smurfit Kappa developed a solution based on two components:

The existing board cutter has the prerequisites to process the zigzag-folded continuous corrugated board recommended by Smurfit Kappa and supplied on pallets. This works for product cartons of a wide variety of formats and sizes in both small and more substantial units. The changeover time to another size is only a few minutes. The small amount of waste produced by the automated cutting of the cartons does not have to be disposed of, but can be used as filling and buffer material in the carton to protect the goods. The solution with continuous corrugated board is significantly cheaper and more flexible than purchasing prefabricated cardboard boxes, which often had to be purchased in minimum quantities in the past and also took up larger storage areas.

Whereas Pelipal previously had to keep more than 500 individual cardboard boxes in different formats in stock, these problems have been eliminated by using continuous corrugated board. In addition to the reduction in material costs, the purchase of packaging, the use of storage space as well as the packaging and handling time were significantly improved and "just-in-time" packaging was made possible.

Pelipal has optimised further: The secret of the new endless corrugated board from Pelipal.

After the advantages of the change to continuous corrugated board at that time, a further optimisation has now been implemented. The BE profile previously used has been replaced by a significantly lower SE flute profile. The now flatter SE flute significantly reduces the height of the palletised continuous corrugated board and thus increases the quantity per pallet, which of course has a direct effect on the further optimisation of the required storage space as well as the extension of production runs.

In addition to the reduction in volume, the new SE flute can not only present the same physical properties of the BE flute in terms of puncture, burst and edge protection, but it simultaneously improves the stability of the edge protection by a further 5%. In parallel, improved restoring forces improve handling when folding, filling and closing the carton.

For transport, the changeover from the BE to the SE flute thus has an enormous volume advantage: Whereas 540lfm used to fit on a pallet, it is now 700lfm. This results in an advantage of almost 30 percent. For Pelipal, this means a saving of every fourth truck in the supply of corrugated board.

This relieves the environment through reduced CO2 emissions, while at the same time process costs are noticeably reduced through less warehouse traffic with larger safety stocks.

Cardboard made from FSC® paper

Another argument in favour of Smurfit Kappa's continuous corrugated board is that it is made from 100 per cent FSC-certified paper. At the same time, all cardboard is fully biodegradable under natural conditions. Since Smurfit Kappa produces its own papers, the company can offer a high level of supply security, especially in the current times. A very important factor for customers.

Ulrich Henning: "We have trusted in the joint cooperation with Smurfit Kappa for over 15 years and are very satisfied with the company's solutions. Smurfit Kappa always gives us important impulses that can be implemented pragmatically. In the process, even small adjustments to the packaging often have major advantages in terms of efficiency and profitability, which in the end not only benefits Pelipal and the end customers, but also the environment".