Heavier does not always mean more durable

Tuscan Iron Entries is a manufacturer of custom-made ornamental iron doors that can weigh in excess of 1,000 pounds. After replacing metal racks and wooden crates with lightweight paperboard, the company reduced product damage and shipping costs.

With such a heavy and expensive product to ship, the company had previously used protective packaging that was equally substantial. Aneel Siddiqui, one of two brothers who co-own Tuscan, said they believed metal racks and wooden crates were the most durable packaging material available. However, doors were still sometimes arriving at their destination damaged. In fact, Siddiqui believes the packaging was actually contributing to the damage.

“With all that weight, the shippers would often drag the crates with a forklift. They would wrap chains around the door frames that were partially exposed in the crate. They’d pull a whole crate by the door frame and bend it,” he said. “Plus the crates and racks were very expensive, and it would take two workers a full day to pack a door for shipment. That’s 16 man-hours just to get a door out the door. It was ridiculous.”

The solution was a two-step process. Each door is individually protected, and a supporting structure also safeguards the integrity of the door and frame combined. The protection comes from various lengths and calipers of a laminated recycled paperboard with a rigid right-angle shape (Laminations, laminationsonline.com). By adding foam cubes, placed strategically between the door and the protective material, each door is completely covered and cushioned. The doors are then banded to the protective frame to keep all the pieces upright. Finally, the entire pack is covered in a white pallet wrap, preventing anything from getting inside the frame.

“It makes our product so much less susceptible to damage,” Siddiqui said. “The truckers can’t see the doorjamb to wrap a chain around. Now they have to grab it from the bottom where they’re supposed to. With our previous packaging process, for every 10-12 doors we’d ship, we’d get one to two calls with a problem. So far with the new packaging we’ve not had any calls about damage and no claims.”

Assembly time for the packs has gone from 16 hours to six hours, and the company is saving 50% on packaging materials costs. The use of paperboard has also cut their shipping weight on each pack by 10% to 15%. Siddiqui envisions a future where they can sell and ship doors directly to customers across the country. This will mean using common carriers and exposing the packs to frequent cross docking, something the previous packaging would not have supported.