According to the German automobile club ADAC, almost one in four traffic accidents in Germany happens when turning, turning in or crossing. If you add classic rear-end collisions at traffic lights or the end of traffic jams, it is not surprising that bumpers are among the spare parts in the automotive industry that need to be replaced most often.
Although the demand for bumpers – and thus also for transport packaging for bumpers – is great, standard packaging is still anything but innovative.
"The packaging in which bumpers are transported is usually very bulky," says Thomas Axler, Smurfit Kappa's sales manager responsible for the automotive sector. The manufacturer of paper-based packaging solutions has factories that specialize in packaging for the Heavy Duty XL sector. Large-format packaging is mainly produced there. The challenges are obvious: the larger and more complex, the more time-consuming the assembly and dismantling is on the part of automotive suppliers and affiliated companies, such as painters for vehicle parts.
"We can load trucks with twice the amount of packaging for our customers"
This has to be done differently, thought the team with a focus on packaging solutions for the automotive industry. In the past, bumpers were packed in simple bottom-lid flaps. Later, these were replaced by so-called U-shape cardboard boxes, explains Patrick Klocke, responsible for key account sales.
The size of the packaging creates another problem: packaging for bumpers cannot be folded compactly. This, in turn, means that special pallets are required to transport the flat-lying goods for the customer – or up to six Euro pallets per stack.
Smurfit Kappa's new bumper packaging solution is significantly more compact and can be delivered on a single Euro pallet. "Depending on the specification of the bumper contour, twice the amount of packaging can fit into the truck and thus also into our customers' warehouses," says Klocke. In this way, virtually every second truck is saved – an enormous saving in freight costs and emissions, given the high transport volumes. Another bonus is the possibility of storage in high-bay warehouses.
Automatic bottom of the packaging saves a lot of time
From the point of view of the packaging specialists, however, this is not even the biggest advantage of Smurfit Kappa's innovative solution. Rather, it is the significant time savings in setting up the packaging. "Until now, packaging for bumpers has had to be laboriously hooked together. This often takes two employees to ensure that one side does not open again while the other gets stuck. This can take several minutes per package," explains Klocke.
The new bumper packaging is completely different: "In our solution, an automatic floor is firmly attached to the ring," he explains. "As a result, the packaging is directly locked in place when it is set up and set up, loaded and sealed within a fraction of the usual time. And all you need is one person."
What is already in use on the market for smaller packaging sizes is considered absolutely innovative in terms of large packaging for special shapes such as bumpers. So innovative, in fact, that Smurfit Kappa has already patented this solution. "After all, we have also invested several years of development in our packaging solution," says Axler.
The first OEMs and suppliers in the automotive industry have already switched to the new concept. There is a great deal of interest in the automotive industry. After all, everyone wants to save time and money and make the supply chain as effective as possible. Smurfit Kappa's new packaging solution is a smart building block for this.
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