The over/under number is 100,000.
If you are producing more than 100,000 trays per year, automating that process makes sense. That’s because when you find yourself over that number, automating your packaging operations with tray forming machinery gives you a solid ROI when calculating labor and corrugated savings.
First, let’s look at labor. Most manufacturing sectors are feeling the labor crunch in trying to find enough people to fill openings. Of course, some of those jobs are more desirable than others. Manually forming trays all day falls into that less desirable category. Automating this process solves your labor challenge. Automation gives you peace of mind as the machine works every day, never calling in sick or needing breaks, while reliably producing trays to meet your production needs.
Second, automation saves you money by reducing the amount of corrugated required for the same sized tray. Using an automatic tray former means you are using less paper per blank, which overall delivers a 10-40% reduction in corrugated costs. In comparison. a self-locking tray formed by hand requires extra rollover flaps. While those flaps may seem insignificant, it does add cost. Over the long haul, that increase begins to build – all of which impacts your bottom line.
When you are ready to automate your tray forming operations, the IPAK TF100 and IPAK TF385 automatic tray formers are two of the industry’s most popular solutions. These machines utilize reliable horizontal blank advance and active compression to form a perfectly shaped tray, ensuring a consistent aesthetic look and proven product protection. The compact TF-100 is an ideal solution for those manufacturers who are looking to add automation of their roll over trays to a machine formed 4 corner glued tray.
Wexxar Bel’s IPAK launched the new TF385 in 2021, which can run several tray styles such as triangulated corner retail-ready display, clamshell, and all agriculture style trays; some of the most popular styles for grocery and big-box stores.
Another advantage automating the forming of your trays is that it gives you more options/flexibility for display openings than hand-formed blanks. This level of automation provides newfound versatility by opening up additional retail display opportunities with your customers. Wexxar Bel’s packaging specialists will work with your team to develop the machine formed tray style that showcases your product to set it apart from your competition, with the added benefit of reducing consumable and labor costs.
Automating your tray forming operations will reduce your labor, save you money and give you a more consistent, better-looking tray for your products. Finally, since automatic tray forming uses less paper, it fits in nicely with your sustainability goals.
If you take the over – Wexxar Bel can make you a winner!
Paul Watmough is the Business Development Manager, Canada, for Wexxar Bel (https://www.wexxar.com/). He can be reached at Paul.Watmough@promachbuilt.com.
