CHAPTER 5 / LESS AIR IN DELIVERIES
JUSSI’S MAGICAL MACHINE
“We won’t achieve the goal by snapping our fingers” Jussi Broberg’s machine removes unnecessary air out of parcels, reducing them in size by on average 30 percent. This could help to cut the number of truck journeys by 100 per year. ON OCCASION, Finland by 30 percent, in theory you have probably that would reduce transportawondered why the tiny, tion by up to 100 trucks per weeny product you year.” ordered is delivered in a gigantic parcel. JUSSI SAYS THREE main You’re not alone, many factors determined the others do, too. purchase of the new technology: PostNord transports millions of parcels every quality, environment and year. As the packages are often of standard cost-efficiency. PostNord is a size, a large volume of unused space, i.e., air, major player and with this new is also transported. technology it can pave the But that’s about to change. way for others in the industry. PostNord Finland has invested in new “We have a central role in technology to eliminate dead space in creating environmentally parcels. friendly solutions”, he says. “It’s a state-of-the-art device that “PostNord’s goal is to be optimizes and minimizes packaging size”, completely fossil-free by 2030. says Jussi Broberg, head of PostNord’s TPL unit in Helsinki. “There can be a lot of dead space in the packaging because the goods are often so varied in shape. In practice, packaging size can be reduced by on average about 30 → The technology can percent!” handle up to 900 But how does this technology actually parcels an hour. work? “The goods are packed in cardboard boxes as usual, but are then transferred to a completely new line. The device measures the filling level of the packaging and minimizes the packaging’s size. There is no empty space left and no need for fillers, such as plastic, cardboard, or paper.”
O
Jussi Broberg Position at PostNord: Head of the TPL Unit in Helsinki, Finland. Closest colleagues: Toni Mäkelä, Marko Lyhty, Jan Zweygbergk, Riku Vuontisjärvi and Oskari Kauranne.
We won’t achieve that by snapping our fingers, but by implementing several measures here and there.” “Transportation is of great importance. If we can reduce it by a hundred trucks a year, it will really make a difference. If the measure is implemented in many places at once, we’ll suddenly be able to reduce trucks by the thousands.”
THE NEW automation line is in Turku and covers about 200 square meters. It can process up to 900 parcels an hour. “Parcel volumes are now so high that no one has time or resources to do this manually”, Jussi says. “If we managed to reduce the size of all parcels we handle in
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PEOPLE BY POSTNORD
