Paying to ship fresh air
Everyone knows the costs, so why are boxes still being over-sized, asks Jo Bradley of Neopost Shipping?
There are a few empty excuses. Many firms will say they have neither the time nor the labour to ‘hand build’ boxes and cartons – they have to use a limited range of preforms in standard sizes, and the ‘best’ size may have run out at the packing station. However, packaging technology has advanced significantly in the last few years and now an intelligent system has been developed that can rapidly tailor-make cartons to the exact size, automatically, as required.
Neopost Shipping’s CVP-500 automated packaging solution constructs a box sized specifically for each single or multi-item consignment – no oversizing, nor redundant void-fill material needed. It can do this with a throughput of up to 400 boxes per hour with a single operator.
This is significant as many of the larger carriers and couriers have moved to a dual system whereby carriage is charged at a rate based on actual weight or ‘volumetric’ or ‘dimensional’ weight, whichever is the greater. This can lead to higher costs for larger packages.
