A breakthrough board grade developed in-house holds benefits for a longtime customer – and our own team.
Accupac is a Pennsylvania-based contract manufacturer for various national personal care product brands – and an Acme Corrugated Box customer for the better part of 20 years. Several years ago, they tapped us to custom design a shipping box central to their daily operations.
The box had several unique requirements: It had to feature side-loading capability and dimensions that could accommodate various combinations of Accupac products. Given it is stacked unconventionally during shipping, the box would also need high crush resistance, or the critical ability to bear a tremendous amount of weight.
THE CHALLENGE
Right out of the gate, this unusually configured box designed by our team satisfied all of Accupac’s shipping and stacking needs. There was just one problem: The box wasn’t compatible with Accupac’s own in-house machinery. It routinely got caught in the company’s case erector as it was being packed and sealed.
To eliminate this hassle for our customer, our team adopted a three-prong solution. It involved die-cutting, scrap removal (requiring hand labor), and gluing portions of the box that were problematic, ultimately allowing the box to travel freely along Accupac’s packing line.
While we were willing to do this for our customer on an ongoing basis, it was tedious and time-consuming work, adding cost to our process and taxing our internal teams.
MEET POWERWALL 60
Always on the lookout for ways to improve, an idea hatched under our roof:
Could POWERWALL 60 be the answer to this longstanding challenge?
Developed in-house in 2019, the POWERWALL 60 board grade fills the ongoing market need for a single-wall box that’s nonetheless sturdy. It is an offshoot of our highly successful POWERWALL 100®, a heavy-duty double-wall box developed a few years prior. POWERWALL 60 became popular the moment we launched it; almost every early adopter still uses it today.
THE OUTCOME
We held our collective breath as we kicked off an experimental redesign of Accupac’s shipping box using POWERWALL 60.
If this new board grade proved compatible with Accupac’s in-house machinery and provided ample stacking strength, it would let our team manufacture the box in one step, as opposed to the time-consuming, costly three-part process we’d been employing for several years.
Thankfully, when put to the test, Accupac’s shipping box – now made of POWERWALL 60 – satisfied both key needs.
For us, the benefits were obvious: a better product and more efficient process.
For Accupac, POWERWALL 60 offers the same essential characteristics they need and had come to expect, in all-around better box – now available to them much faster than before.
“Acme came to us with a solution that would improve our supply chain stability,” Lindsay Vill, Marketing and Inside Sales Operations Manager at Accupac, commented.
“They were able to implement this to better service us and to be sure our customer had product.”
Does your company need custom corrugated packaging that satisfies each of your unique requirements? Learn more about Acme Corrugated Box’s product offerings or contact us today.
