In today’s manufacturing word, finding new cost-savings on the production floor is a neverending pursuit for progressive companies taking daily steps to ensure their long-term competitiveness—and the Woodbridge, Ont.-based Kisko Products Inc. offers compelling proof that good things happen when you make the right investments in your new production equipment in terms of bottom-line payback.
And that’s pretty much how it played out a couple of years ago when the fast-growing premium-juice packer and producer of popular frozen treats—including such summertime favorites as Mr. Freeze Pops and Pop-its, Kisko Freeze Pops and Freezies, Shrek and Crush Freeze Pops—invested in two Lantech stretchwrapping machines to enhance worker safety at the company’s former production facility in Markham, Ont.
According to Kisko’s vice-president of operations Randy Josephs, the purchase of two S-300 straddle stretchwrapping systems turned out to be a real “accountant’s dream,” not only helping ensure a safer working environment for the end-of-line packaging area of the plant, but also delivering significant cost-savings by slashing stretchwrap film consumption by 35 per cent, as well as eliminating about fours hours of overtime per day.
“Much like our plant equipment, we put a premium on safety as it relates to our transport packaging,” says Josephs, recalling that the company’s older-generation, aging turntable-type stretchwrappers were no longer able to keep up with the amount of hand-palletized loads and half-loads—reaching up to 70-inches-high and weighing up to 1,800 pounds—being shipped out of the busy Markham plant, which operated on a 20-hour, five-day weekly schedule.
Aside from being too slow, the old stretchwrappers were not very efficient in terms of pre-stretch capabilities, according to Josephs, resulting in large film expenditures.
“We knew that new equipment on the market could cut our film use significantly and improve our overall efficiency, so we started to look at our options,” explains Josephs, adding that at first Kisko pursued the idea of installing rotary-arm stretchwrappers to handle the top-heavy, and sometimes unstable, loads.
“At the time we started to look at the new equipment, we discovered that all the other machines on the market with rotary arms, including Lantech’s, required a safety fence around them,” expands Josephs.
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