New unique compactor slashes reverse logistics costs

Do retailers know the true costs of their reverse logistics? With regard to waste handling it seems not, according to the creators of the Spacemaker* card and plastic compactor devised by two directors, Simon Brown and Paul Overfield, formerly at Translift Bendi whose revolutionary articulated forklift did so much to transform warehouse economics. The result is that in Britain alone many millions of pounds are lost every year through the inefficient handling of waste card/plastic in reverse logistics.

One of Britain's four leading grocery retailers knew it had a costly problem handling its reverse logistics for waste card and plastic, made worse by the fact that recycling plants became more discriminatory over acceptance of waste card. This meant that card should not be mixed with plastic, otherwise it would be rejected and so any payments (cost recovery) made from recycling waste would be lost, which can be considerable given that clean cardboard can fetch £45 per tonne and polyethylene stretchwrap £200 per tonne.

The supermarket method of choice was to use traditional baling machines in stores but the problem with such a compaction rate was that if the bale was contaminated it did not fall apart easily and so the extra labour needed to separate the card and plastic eroded the bale's value. One innovative retailer decided to remove the conventional compactors from stores and use reverse logistics to collect the card from and take it to one of eight regional recycling plants located next to their regional distribution centres, (RDCs), where it would be sorted and baled to maximise cost recovery. The Spacemaker, however, is unique as it is designed to reduce volume by 75% and hence the cost of transport whilst showing that it is still easy to separate and sort on arrival.

What Spacemaker does is to use a compression rate of only 4 to 1 while card is still inside the roll cages because the patented design protects the cage from the effects of compression whilst inside the Spacemaker. But to see if the machine is suitable to achieve all the 'soft' and hard benefits plus the considerable environmental bonuses it is necessary to consider your current set-up.  

If you are using roll cages to decant lorry loads what type are you using and are you so short of space in the back of store that you have to replace card/plastic filled roll cages out in the yard for return to recycling centres? To save time and therefore money roll cages should be nestable with a metal front rather than use of a cling film wrap to the front to contain the load, which is time-consuming and nauseating given that operatives must walk around the cage several times. Storing card-filled roll cages out in the yard for long periods where they can get wet and attract pests is inadvisable because rain water adds weight and there is a good chance of recyclers rejecting such waste. But not putting roll cages in the yard can lead to congestion in back of store, leaving no room for arriving produce. This hugely impacts the time taken to tip a load and also delays putting stock on shop shelves.

Volume is the big issue

Does your yard space typically store many hundreds of trays and stacks of pallets along with roll cages waiting to be reversed for reuse? If so do you know how much capital is tied up in them? So the big issue is that card and plastic take up too much volume and adds cost of business. Each supermarket of this retailer, for example, typically produces one full lorry load of card and plastic (40 roll cages) in one 24 hr period. Spacemakers' directors were given a brief to reduce volumes by any amount they could by compacting it in a cage to reduce double handling and much else besides and all by using a 13 amp power supply.

Correctly integrated into the labour shifts, the Spacemaker saves time, space and transport costs. The space gained from the roll cages is the footprint of 10 instead of 40 which saves almost 30 mt2 but the empty roll cages can also now be stacked outside as they take up far less room and don't attract pests. Over a seven-day period Spacemaker can produce close to 300 packed rolled cages which gives three benefits. The first is the reduction in cage fleet size. Secondly, cage availability at peak periods is critical to get products on the shelves without delay. Spacemaker is also reducing lorry loading and unloading times by over one hour a day, and estimates show that an ambient lorry costs £50 an hour to run. Space is also freed up in the returning lorries because now only 10 card-filled roll cages are needed instead of 40, thus releasing 30 mt2 of space for pallets and trays to be returned.

But what, you may wonder, are the environmental benefits, which also translate into cash gains? Let us just take one superstore experience at a trial store. After 10 months of operation completing 19,800 cycles, potential roll cage reduction was from 11,313 to 2,829 and what would have been 257 lorry loads reduced to 64  In a full year this store expects to save 231 lorry journeys a year or 6,237 miles of HGV travel. What is more, it released 10,182 roll cages back into the network, plus 6,930 pallets and 69,300 reusable trays out of the stores. With a steady Spacemaker roll out to the stores, by the end of this year returns would be reduced by 1,078 HGV trips which so far will mean 12,936 saved trips or 342,272 HGV road miles per year. Those figures will be very much larger after all stores have Spacemaker which leaves this innovative retailer deserving some 'green' accolade of the year.

There are 14,000 potential supermarket users of roll cages in the UK alone. Worldwide the figure is far more and so shows the huge potential to cut costs and improve the environment. Relevant businesses should take a serious look at the Spacemaker.

*www.spacematedirect.co.uk     









                                                                                                                                                                                 
Spacemaker tutorial at a new installation