One of the world’s largest suppliers of office stationery has made a major investment in bespoke stretchwrapping equipment from Midlands-based Orion Packaging Systems (UK) Ltd for its UK headquarters in Telford, Shropshire.
The Telford facility stores thousands of boxed and packaged stationery items which need to be picked and packed from the warehouse and then palletised ready for transportation to either regional distribution centres or direct to clients.
The pallets were previously being wrapped by hand but the sheer volume of pallet traffic, and the amount of wrapping film that was being used, led Lyreco bosses to seek a more consistent and cost-effective wrapping solution.
Steve Theobald, C I & Methods Controller at Lyreco, explained:
“At Telford we are sending out up to 600 pallets each day which means that not only is a lot of time spent on manual wrapping, but if our consumable use is inefficient then we are spending money that we do not need to spend.
“Furthermore we were concerned about the manual handling of the palletised loads and the potential health and safety implications for our staff.”
Lyreco examined a number of options, seeking a machine that was durable enough to operate for 16 hours a day while providing secure, consistent wrapping and driving down consumable cost.
The machine the company chose was an Orion ARA400 automatic stretchwrapping machine fitted with power stretch which stretches the film up to three and a half times, creating substantial cost savings from day one. The purchase represented an investment of around £80,000 but it is already proving money well spent.
Steve Theobald continued:
“We were highly impressed by Orion’s product quality, the fact that the machines are built in the UK and that they designed and built a machine to our precise needs rather than trying to sell us something ‘off the shelf’.
“They were prepared to spend time ensuring the machine did what we wanted, adding some special pallet guides to ensure the pallets are correctly positioned. We also like the fact that they are relatively local, with spare parts and support quickly available if we need them.”
“Operator acceptance has been excellent – indeed the staff have been very keen to use the machine – while wrapping quality has been excellent, consumable use is very much lower, and our health and safety concerns for our staff have been completely allayed.
The machine can cope with up to 90 pallets per hour with a cycle time of just 38 seconds.
Established in 1987, Orion is today one of only a handful of UK-owned manufacturers of end of line stretchwrapping equipment for palletised and unpalletised goods. Orion offers a full range of automatic and semi-automatic systems, available either as stand-alone units or fully integrated into the production line. It has also diversified into materials handling, giving customers access to the complete offering for product movement and packaging prior to despatch.
Visit the Orion Packaging Machinery website for more information on Orion Pushed the Envelope for Stationary Leader