Davis Neon, located in Heath Springs, S.C., has been creating customized neon signs for clients around the world since 1972. Protecting the signs during shipment is crucial because the alternative is expensive—it costs time, money and customer satisfaction.

“We were using preformed polyethylene foam sheets that took a long time to unload from the trucks and required a lot of storage space,” says shipping manager Dave Lytle. “In addition, each sheet had to be hand cut around each sign, so packers were spending a lot of time cutting and cleaning up tiny scraps of foam at the end of the day.”

Illuminating results

There was also room for improvement in production efficiency for Davis Neon.

Implementing a continuous foam tube system provided enough protection for the signs and resulted in a 62% savings in material costs and increased productivity by 20%.

To produce continuous foam tubes, the system uses two components that when mixed, react with each other to create high-quality polyurethane packaging foam on-demand. The foam tube feature allows the system to seal a bag in such a way that it produces small, tube-like shapes that can be placed where product protection is needed. The result is a one-step engineered package, at the touch of a button. For even greater efficiency, packagers can make the continuous foam tubes in advance and store them for future use.

“We were looking for an alternative packaging method that would provide comparable protection, increase productivity, and reduce cost and waste,” says Lytle. “We found it.”

Sealed Air 800-568-6636 www.sealedair.com