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HALLMARK OF QUALITY

Hallmark Cards is the UK’s best known greetings cards manufacturer, supplying products to both retailers and wholesalers. While seasonal variations place huge demands on the business during periods such as Mothering Sunday and Christmas, most months see approximately 9.5 million cards being dispatched from its distribution centre in Bradford.

As part of a total review of its warehousing operations, Hallmark was keen to identify ways of minimising empty running in an attempt to reduce transport costs and carbon emissions. Matthew Tillie, distribution operations manager at Hallmark, explained: “As a business with a strong environmental ethos, we were aware of the phenomenon of empty running, whereby a significant proportion of our trailers were carrying half-filled boxes. This was both environmentally and financially wasteful. Hence, our desire to explore technologies that could provide a more flexible solution to packaging.”

Hallmark now uses two Sayoye Jivaro machines to tailor the boxes by trimming them to correspond closely to their volume/fill levels. This technology cuts packaging waste significantly and also reduces transport costs. Upon leaving the Jivaros, an Autoslip machine is used to fold the delivery note and place it into a polythene envelope prior to application to the outside of the box. Each Jivaro unit is capable of processing up to 14 boxes per minute, in what is believed to be a unique automation process in the UK.

Matthew Tillie concludes: “While the Jivaro machines have reduced box sizes by just centimetres in most cases, this relatively small reduction really mounts up when you consider the average throughput of 4000 boxes per day. We believe the adoption of this technology has improved our transport efficiency by at least 25 per cent, which has been achieved by the better use of trailer capacity.”

Source : Savoye press release June 2011