Kisko Products, one of North America's leading producers and distributors of freeze pops and premium juice products, puts a premium on safety and materials efficiency as they relate to transport packaging. Cases are hand-palletized in loads up to 40 x 48 x 70 inches maximum height, or in half-height loads.

The aging turntable stretch wrappers the company once used were slow and inefficient in the pre-stretch of film, so ongoing material costs were high. Randy Josephs, vice president of operations at Kisko, knew that new equipment on the market could cut his film use significantly and improve overall efficiency.

One constraint he didn't look forward to was the amount of floor space new rotary-arm stretch wrappers might take up since rotary arms typically require safety fence around them. He also knew that someone would likely find a way to defeat a safety perimeter while the machine was running or being serviced, resulting in an accident.

Josephs then found out about a straddle stretch wrapping system (Lantech, 800-866-0322, www.lantech.com) that features a large shock-absorbing safety shield on the arm and a drive system that stops the rotation immediately if there is any pressure on the safety shield. Savings in stretch film would also be realized. Electronically controlled pre-stretch can range from 100% to 300%. Kisko's machines are set for 200% pre-stretch with 70-ga. film, and each pallet is wrapped in two layers of film.

“We could see a huge difference in costs in just six weeks, and actually paid for the machines in six months,” says Josephs. He adds that the two new machines have cut film use more than 35% and eliminated about four hours of overtime a day, while churning out several hundred pallets per day during the company's seasonal peak.