Plastic strapping from ... The Plastic Strapping Company Ltd. Nottingham.
Plastic Strapping from The Plastic Strapping Company Ltd
There are few specialist plastic strapping companies remaining in the UK, a major part of the market now being catered for - to an extent - by strapping suppliers who are multi product vendors i.e know a little about a lot of products but would not claim to have an in depth knowledge about all or any of them.
The need for specialist knowledge goes frequently unrecognised by users who see strapping, and strapping equipment as items to be purchased as cheaply as possible, and assume the system is ok if subsequently loads don't fall off pallets or other incidents are reported.
So what potential risks and unnecessary costs are Companies exposed to when combining a 'cheap is best' policy with sourcing from non specialist outlets?
Plastic Strapping:
Example 1: Cheap imported combination one piece plastic strapping tools are purchased for use with say 250 -300kgs break strength polypropylene strapping to secure
pallets.
System limitation:
The majority of the tools use only a 25mm long carton seal with limited strap holding ability, so de-rating the 300kgs strap to between 60 -100kgs when
applied..
Potential Risks:
The obvious risk is that of pack stability/safety during handling/transport and the resultant danger to personnel should the pallet be subject to the slightest
of shock loads.Surveys show that that strapping methods/materials are seldom included in risk assessments so what chance of a successful defence could an employer raise
against a claim for damages in the event of being sued following an incident? VERY SLIM AND IN REALITY NONE!
Plastic Strapping Costs:
Mention plastic strapping costs and the immediate focus is generally on the buying in costs, and despite a buyers best endeavours it is rare nowadays in a well
established market, to achieve more than a few pence per thousand metres saving. and the far greater cost of actually applying it to cartons and palletised product in
terms of labour is frequently ignored. In fact its hardly ever mentioned by strapping suppliers either - or considered by users unless volume of product is so
great that the issue is forced upon them. Most Companies are still using methods prevalent in the 1940's
The unspoken reason for this is often that buying offices consider application methods to be a production dept issue.
Production on the other hand often has other ' more important' priorities and the strapping issue is relegated to the bottom of the pile unless it causes production or
safety problems. Even if the method of applying plastic strapping is acknowledged as less than ideal it is seldom treated seriously enough to actually cost the scale of
profit loss - because that's what it is - being incurred year after year by using the same 1940's slow and tiresome methods of manual strapping in common use.
Watch this 40 second video showing a pallet being strapped in 40 seconds.
Example 2:
It is the case that even in 2014, on carton strapping applications there are Companies that have many handtools in use, rather than use a very fast low cost semi
automatic strapping machine, that fail to recognise the major cost issue arising from the need to have someone behind every hand strapping tool in operation.
These considerations are generally raised by specialist strapping companies but seldom by multi product vendors of packaging materials.