NEED FOR STANDARD PACKS

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32386, 27 August 1970, Page 9

NEED FOR STANDARD PACKS

The lack of standardisation of export packs appears to affect many small and medium-sized firns. They could have their own packs or containers specially designed and produced for them, but with small production lines the unit costs would be too high. So many of these firms are forced to use existing packaging which is ,not ideal for their products.

The problem was discussed at a seminar in Sydney late last year and it was suggested then that a survey should be made to determine the feasibility of developing a set of standard export packs that could be used by a number of small or medium companies. Such a set would include packs of various sizes and materials, to cover a range of goods. If the scheme is developed over in Australia, it might well pay New Zealand exporters to take a look at it One of the speakers at the seminar was Mr Cyril Finch, export manager of Lockwood Magrath (a manufacturing chemist whose products include orange and lemon flavours and eucalpt essential oils). Mr Finch said many of his

company’s products were sold on the basis of samples which, in export,' have to be sent air mail. Usually a oneounce sample wak acceptable and an ideal container, because of its light weight, would be made from aluminimum. However, said Mr Finch, because of the small number required, it was cheaper, though still expensive, to import small aluminium containers from Germany than to have them made locally. When an export product was packed in glass, he said, total weight including protective packaging was more than doubled. A possibility for overcoming this might be the development of polystyrene protective pads for products in glass bottles, along the lines of methods already used in other exporting nations. Blocks of polystyrene could be moulded to fit round a bottle in an assembly which was a module of an export carton. Square Is Best For export products typically sold in one pound lots, Mr Finch suggested that a

square, one-pound aluminium tin would be superior to the normal round, tinplate container in corpmon use. Not only would it be lighter and therefore lower freight costs, but a number of markets, such as Thailand and Singapore, preferred the square tin—which is common in the U.K. and Europe and now familiar in Asia through European exports. - The limiting factor with each of these suggestions, however, said Mr Finch, was that an order from one small or medium export company by itself was not enough to provide an economic run for packaging manufacturers. If makers knew that a packaging product would be acceptable to a number of companies, they could engage in volume production and bring unit prices down to acceptable levels. Although aluminium metal is relatively expensive, he said, the total weight required for a small export pack was tiny, and a big cost item was the tooling required to set up a run.