Chain Logistics and Berlin Packaging: a long-term relationship with a future
At Chain Logistics, a good relationship with our customers comes first. It has a reason we profile ourselves as the most personal logistics service provider. The long-term relationships we have built up with some of our clients are therefore of great value. So too is our relationship with Berlin Packaging in Wijchen, a total supplier of packaging materials.
Pilot for cosmetics manufacturer
We have been working with Berlin Packaging since 2011. At that time, the company was still operating under the name Novio Packaging. At the end of 2019, Novio Packaging was acquired by Berlin Packaging. This did not change anything about our cooperation. But, establishing the cooperation in 2011 was not so easy. We at Chain Logistics were convinced that we could support Berlin Packaging with logistics services, including the assembly and packaging of products.
As a first pilot, Chain got to work on aluminium labelling the perfume bottles of a then emerging cosmetics manufacturer. The challenge was to make aluminium stick to transparent glass, without any traces of glue being visually visible. In China, they couldn’t get it under control and in the Netherlands, the quality perception at social workshops was often not that high. So even though Berlin Packaging considers social enterprise very important, that leap of faith was still a bit too uncertain.
“We always engage with Chain at an early stage, so they can think along with us in the packaging process during our product development. They then carry out an open time calculation and convert the activities into a unit price. This way, we know in advance exactly what our costs are”.
– Marck Jansen, Berlin Packaging
Custom-made UV adhesive
We took up the challenge with both hands and started to reason out how things could be done better from a customer perspective. What are the bottlenecks? How do we solve them? We then had a custom-made UV adhesive developed in combination with a UV assembly line. This turned out to be a success. The perfume bottles were provided with UV glue by a self-developed gluing robot. An assembly worker then performed a visual inspection whether the aluminium labels met quality requirements to then place the labels on the glued bottle. After this, the item was placed on a conveyor belt under the UV lamp, allowing the glue to cure. The glue dried transparently, exactly as desired.
We did all this with a mixed group of employees. Thus, we put our own people as well as reintegration candidates on the process.
End result:
• Better product
• Higher quality
• Less waste/rejection
• Short communication
• Social return
From one-off projects to millions of units a year
So the cosmetics manufacturer’s pilot proved to be a success. We subsequently had the opportunity to carry out a multitude of projects for Berlin Packaging. From shrinking products and shortening and sawing off wooden diffusers to repacking pallets and gluing bamboo shampoo caps. These projects range from manual to advanced automation and from one-off projects of just 100 pieces to projects of millions on an annual basis.
Nowadays, Berlin Packaging engages us at an early stage, allowing us to help think about the packaging process during product development. We then carry out an open time calculation and convert the activities into a unit price. This way, Berlin Packaging knows exactly what their costs are in advance.
And the project that started it all? We are still carrying that out! In the meantime the perfume bottles have received a number of redesigns, completely changing the processes. All perfume bottles still pass through the hands of Chain Assembly production staff. And we are rightly proud of that.
We hope to work with Berlin Packaging in this pleasant way for many years to come.
