Palletising Potential
Stretching the palletising envelope New developments in palletising sustainability offers brand owners and logistics companies more efficient packaging solutions for improved pallet-load stability. By delivering significant material savings and an enhanced sustainability footprint, Dow are leading the way in overcoming today’s sustainability challenges in partnership with other key players. Load security represents a major challenge for supplychain and freight industries, and it is estimated that more than 4% of the products transported every year on the roads of Europe are either lost, or are arriving damaged. Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics has been looking at the perspective of two main industries representing the largest consumers of flexible packaging, to work on new developments that ensure a better overall performance of load packaging systems. These take into consideration the type of application and the interaction between all the different packaging components, whilst addressing cost efficiencies and their environmental impact.
Lighter and Brighter In the case of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), the requirements of a typical beverage producer were used in the trials to optimise palletisation, combining stretch wrap and collation shrink for bottles or cans packaging. Dow’s ELITE™ AT Resins enabled a reduction of the thickness of stretch wrap film, while INNATE™ Precision Packaging Resins helped to downgauge the collation shrink film. The overall optimised packaging system resulted in a 25% material saving and improved optics, puncture, tear and elongation of the films, compared to incumbent solutions. The flexible packaging consumption was also reduced from 2,606 grams to only 1,942 grams per pallet, whilst load stability performance was significantly improved. Overall CO2 consumption was also reduced by 219 MT for one packaging line per year (considering a standard line with an average productivity of 21 pallets per hour). The requirements of a typical chemical producer were examined to find a more efficient way of palletising industrial goods such as cement, chemicals, fertilizers, or seeds. In this case, Dow’s XZ89507.00 resin provided the opportunity to move from EVA-based stretch hood to an all-PE one, allowing for more robust, lighter and flexible packaging. INNATE™ Precision Packaging Resins enabled downgauging of the heavy-duty shipping sacks. The resulting all-PE optimised packaging system provided 14% flexible packaging consumption savings compared with incumbent solutions.
30 SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING NEWS
The flexible packaging consumption per pallet was reduced from 6,278 to 5,383 grams whilst maintaining load stability performance. CO2 emissions were also significantly reduced by 210 MT for one packaging line per year (considering a standard line with an average productivity of 15 pallets per hour).
