CGOODS, located in Borgholzhausen in East-Westphalia, Germany, specializes in C-parts. These include general industrial supplies such as pallets, workwear, packaging, cardboard, strapping and much more. CGOODS customers can purchase all of these consumables from a single source, with procurement and logistics management ensuring that products are available on-site as required with minimal storage cost and effort. One area where the company is extremely successful is in warehouse logistics for corrugated cardboard boxes for shipping and secondary packaging. Rainer Schwarberg, Managing Partner at CGOODS, has identified a major trend: "Customers are placing smaller orders, but they are ordering more frequently and they want varying formats. Online business in particular is accelerating this development." The dimensions of the cardboard blanks vary widely, and as demand increases, so too does the number of different boxes that CGOODS has to stock for its customers. These are low-margin products and with limited storage capacity, CGOODS management began looking for a system that would let them produce small batches themselves on demand. "Storing the raw materials would then take far less space, and we would be able to respond very quickly to requests," said Schwarberg.
Format change at the touchscreen
The choice finally fell on an AutoBox from KOLBUS. "The machine impressed us with its ability to process corrugated cardboard blanks up to a size of 2.50 by 6.0 meters, a size we need to produce shipping cartons for bikes," says Rainer Schwarberg. "Add to this, the fact that the system is operation is simplicity itself using the interactive touch screen, which enables format changes in under a minute." The AutoBox is one aspect of KOLBUS' strategy of leveraging the know-how gained in its traditional business areas, such as bookbinding, for the production of packaging. The current KOLBUS machine range stretches from systems for corrugated cardboard for industrial applications to luxury packaging. With its modular machine concept, the AutoBox can produce more than 100 FEFCO box types as standard. Other formats can be programmed individually as required. Output is up to 1200 boxes per hour. The system is economical with energy consumption about 50 percent lower than for comparable machines.
The modular concept lets customers easily add extra modules, for example, printing units. This was an important consideration for CGOODS, in view of the strong trend towards printed shipping packaging, especially in online retailing. Among the first customers to take advantage of packaging production on demand are online pharmacies and automotive components suppliers. The machine installed at CGOODS includes two punching modules, used to punch handle openings in the blanks. Other options include automatic loading and unloading modules and a heavy-duty pack to process triple wall cardboard.
Quality from the very beginning
Foundry since 1877
