Our client manufactures 25 million individual products across 20 different varieties.
The Customer
Our customer is a large bakery who produces and supplies a wide range of frozen pastries and bakes in printed skillet and crash lock base cartons to major supermarkets in the UK. They manufacture 25 million individual products across 20 different varieties, some in higher volumes than others and some which are seasonal. They require freezer suitable carton board packaging in four or six items per carton profiles.
The Issue
The various varieties of pasty are manufactured at a range of different sites across the UK but are all carton packed at one central site.
The pastries and bakes are supplied frozen and stored at the packing site until they are required by the supermarkets, when they are then carton packed and dispatched.
The challenge for the packing site was that the supermarkets requirements can be difficult to forecast and are subject to late changes due to seasonal effects and customer demand. Due to very restricted storage space and costs involved in stock piling printed cartons they did not have the option to print and store a full range of units in sufficient quantities to meet all eventualities. They also ran the risk of changes in artwork being required, particularly the ingredients section which has been subject to changes in EU regulations since Brexit, coupled the availability of ingredients, which could have led to obsolete product and large numbers of unusable cartons which had to be destroyed.
Working together with our customers’ production and scheduling team we have been able to set up and store a rolling three to six month inventory.
The Solution
Supplying raw folding box board, GC2 and GC1, freezer suitable material to ensure we always have enough base material on site to meet any demand.
Carton orders are now placed directly with us once the supermarkets have confirmed their requirements. The latest artwork files are checked for each unit before collating and manufacturing the required amounts of each carton, we deliver the appropriate printed carton or skillet ‘just in time’ to the packaging line eliminating the need to store at their own site.
The Result and Benefits
By maintaining a minimum requirement of sheet material we are able to ensure an unbroken supply of cartons and skillets despite fluctuations in demand. We have also been able to completely eliminate our customers need to ‘print and store’ cartons in advance which has led to significant saving in both storage costs and obsolete cartons, and has ensured that the latest version is always available.