Avocado and mango boxes are the only ones which don't run to the standard
SA WOULD appear to be amongst the world leaders in standardised (size and shape) packaging for the international movement of fruit.
A recent report from Financial Times carried in SA's Business Day headlined the start of efforts to achieve standardisation in cardboard boxes for fruit and vegetables in Europe.
In this case, some of that continent's biggest packaging companies have joined up to investigate standardising shapes and sizes of fruit boxes, matching them to the volumetric capacities of trucks and seafreight containers.
The first practical version, according to the report, has just been produced by the Swedish SCA packaging company, a box which also allows for interlocking.
This system, according to Guy Standaert, secretary general of ProBox - a Brussels-based industry body, representing 30 big packaging companies in Europe, the US, SA and Brazil - is a first effort at a potential world standard for such items.
But this is not true, according to a number of SA fruit packaging experts.
Europe, according to the report, uses about 1-billion cardboard boxes for fruit and vegetables each year - worth an estimated US$840-million.
At present, it says, they come in 50 or more shapes and sizes.
Any standardisation, the report adds, could lead to a massive saving in packaging and distribution costs.
But, Dave Muir, structural packaging designer at Capespan, told FTW, standard sizing and interlocking are years-old concepts in the SA fruit industry.
All our boxes are either 400x300mm or 400x600mm in external dimension - designed to fit the ISO (International Standards Organisation) standard pallet sizes of 1200x1000mm (the more popular) or 1200x800mm.
And Capespan (the unified Unifruco/Outspan company) also has its own range of patented box designs which allow for this much sought-after interlocking and interstackability.
Muir reckons that - with the others in the fruit export industry who also use similar sizes and designs - some 90% of SA's multi-billion rand a year export volume goes out in a standardised packaging format.
This, he added, leads to optimum costing of packaging. Cardboard, he said, is costed on area-times-basis mass (grams per square metre). So the less paper you use, the cheaper the box.
You don't overspec the size because of the added cost - which could run to millions depending on the volume of your exports.
Briane Reynolds, sales director for Kohler Corrugated in the Western Cape, is also a happy box manufacturer when it comes to these standardised fruit boxes.
Avocado and mango boxes are about the only ones which don't run to the standard, he said. All our other boxes for vegetables and fruit - ranging from bananas, citrus, grape, apples, pears, plums and nectarines, for example - are all four-by-three (metres) or six-by-four.
Kohler - as part of its customer service - is very much into standardisation, where economies of scale lead to lower packaging costs for their clients. We have a computer programme in place for customers to be able to optimise their packaging and keep their costs at a minimum.
And - while Kohler still manufactures a very large volume of customised sizes each year (many for odd-sized products) - Reynolds also notes that many other industries are also standardisation conscious.
The canning, soft drinks and brewing industries are all standardised, he told FTW.
It's a concept that goes down the line, with the paper manufacturers for the corrugators also very much into standardisation.
Matt Spence, marketing manager for Sappi's Containerboard company - which produces the krafft paper used in cardboard boxes - also wants to encourage standardisation, and its attractive economies of scale.
We are always trying to get clients to standardise their sizes to match our paper sizes, he said. It's a cost saving for everybody, down to the end buyer of the products being packaged.
BY ALAN PEAT
