Lindum Packaging launches Innovation Centre to cut pallet stability issues

Leading pallet stability and wrapping provider Lindum Packaging has opened its new £250,000 Innovation Centre.

It provides an offsite solution to solve the pallet stability issues that cause goods to get damaged in transit, costing companies thousands of pounds in lost sales every year.

The Innovation Centre provides a facility that is designed to replicate its customers’ packaging operations and in-transit conditions without disrupting their day-to-day operations.

Lindum Packaging said early customer trials have delivered ‘excellent results’.

Changes to pallet formation and stacking have allowed one customer to dispatch 60 tubs of paint on a pallet instead of 48, saving them £1m per year through transport and efficiency gains.

By trialling and proving the case for switching to a thinner, pre-stretched film, Lindum has also reduced an Oriental food supplier's plastic consumption by 83.2%, and achieving a packaging cost saving of 66.6%

The 300m2 Innovation Centre is the first of its kind to identify and solve the problems that cause movement in transport (MIT) issues.

With 750 million pallet journeys a year, MIT issues affect 11% of these journeys, leading to 82.5 million pallets arriving at their destination with some damage every year. An issue that results in huge product and financial losses for businesses.

The Innovation Centre reproduces customers’ production and packaging operations and transport conditions using G force tests to replicate the stresses of a vehicle braking.

Customers can send a problem pallet to Lindum who will trial multiple solutions to give scientifically accurate, data-backed results to diagnose the root problem and advise on changes to production and packaging lines.

Rick Sellars, sales manager at Lindum Packaging, said: "MIT is a major unknown issue for many businesses. For example, we’ve been working with a global paint manufacturer to help them identify why their pallets were falling over in transit. They were wasting £250,000 on goods damaged in transit every year because of rejected deliveries, stock write-offs and additional material and transport costs."

The launch of the Innovation Centre follows the success of Lindum's Mobile Pallet Stability Test Lab. The mobile unit, which was launched in April last year, simulates the stresses that a loaded pallet is subject to when a vehicle brakes suddenly.