German online photo-printing specialist Cewe ships more than 6 billion products per year – almost all of them in flat packs. During its annual peak – the two months leading up to Christmas – the company has to ship as many as 100,000 items a day as customers around Europe order photo books, calendars, wall art or framed photos to gift to friends and family.
Such volumes – which continue to grow as consumers seek quality physical versions of their digital photography – were placing significant pressure on the company’s resources, largely due to the intensive manual process of packing products securely, something that was amplified when freight partner DHL mandated a minimum of 10mm package thickness for ‘flat’ items.
Enter Ranpak, a global name in environmentally sustainable, paper-based packaging solutions for e-commerce and industrial supply chains. For Cewe, Ranpak installed its semi-automated Flap’it! machines on the EOL (End of Line) of the warehouse’s packaging system. Besides securely packing the photography in slim packages, Flap’it! is connected to digital label printers that speed the packaging process and eliminate the amount of physical labour required to put address stickers on each package.
Cewe’s technical project manager Imke Banemann told Inside Retail that installing Ranpak’s solution has helped reduce the largely temporary labour force required to ship goods at peak times by about 60 per cent. Previously, it has had to hire and train some 450 part-time staff to manage the 90 per cent increase in peak workload. With Flap’it!, 10 packing stations were reduced to just four.
Besides that, Cewe expects to save up to 15 per cent in material costs after optimising to a smaller cardboard surface area thanks to the Flap’it! technology and removing adhesive labels. That’s because the original cardboard packing – before Ranpak’s machines were deployed – required a larger surface area, and double-side adhesive stickers for sealing.
“Ranpak Automation optimised a new cardboard packing design to a smaller surface area,” explained Banemann. “We were able to remove all the manual work of adhesive stickers on the cardboard packing and eliminate the adhesive stickers in each cardboard package by introducing a hotmelt glue securing the mailers within seconds.”
Based in the city of Oldenburg in North Germany, Cewe operates across 14 European markets, has four facilities in Germany and employs more than 4200 staff. Ranpak Automation installed six Flap’it! packaging machines – each able to pack up to 400 orders per hour – at three of Cewe’s sites: Oldenburg, Germering and Eschbach.
Cewe decided to purchase five Flap’it! packaging machines from Ranpak in the first quarter of 2018, stipulating that all had to be operational by the end of the third quarter ahead of the annual peak season. That process included factory acceptance tests and site acceptance testing. Ranpak was up to the challenge, completing the installations on time – all undertaken without any disruption to the existing packaging line and processes.
The project planning and deployment included agreeing to corrugation quality and size dimensions with Cewe and its corrugated cardboard suppliers, followed by working with internal automation engineers on machine orientation at each of the three sites.
Before automation, each package had to be processed manually, but thanks to Ranpak, many of the manual packing stations could be eliminated.
The solution has helped Cewe to reduce delivery time to the end customer and improve pack quality by providing better protection of goods shipped.
“The installation of Ranpak’s solution was carried out in a very tight time frame, and we are very happy with the result. Now we are looking forward to undertaking more projects with Ranpak in the future,” concluded Banemann.
