Are Lantech Stretch Wrappers More Sustainable? / Matt Wirtz

https://www.lantech.com/
Why are Lantech Stretch machines sustainable? 
What does a stretch wrap machine do to help your packaging be more sustainable? 
Are these machines safer than hand wrapping? 

Benefits: 1.Less Material Used 2. Repeatable 3.Labor Savings 4. Reliable 
 

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:35

Welcome to sustainable packaging with Cory Connors. I'm very excited to introduce Mr. Matt Wirtz , who is the regional sales manager for Lantech, Matt and I have worked together for many, many years, sold many systems packaging systems together and helped hundreds of companies with their sustainability. Matt, how are you, sir?

Matt Wirtz: 0:54

Well thank you, Cory . I appreciate you having me.

Cory Connors: 0:57

Good man. So, so excited to talk about sustainability involved with stretch film machines, particularly Lantech my favorite brand. You know I wanted to kind of get a little bit of your background first. So how did you get into packaging?

Matt Wirtz: 1:12

Well, you know, I started out in industrial sales and I quickly moved into the merger, merged, merged into the packaging arena. Soon after, and I've been here in packaging for about 15 years, but really when I, when I think about the packaging industry and in my involvement with it I get pretty excited. I get excited to talk about it and it's it's always a fun experience because as you do as well, Cory , we see some pretty fun and interesting things and you know, helping our customers. Choose from a variety of different decisions they could make on how to best package their product to really at the end of the day, ensure that it gets there safely from a to B an asthma condition is, is our ultimate goal, but doing it in a, in a in a wise environmental way, in a sustainable way is really what we're talking about here. So what

Cory Connors: 2:02

makes packaging stretch film machine more sustainable than someone wrapping a pallet by

Matt Wirtz: 2:08

hand? Sure, sure. Good question. I get that all the time. Really the central theme, if I were to kind of summarize it to start off with is basically using less and making what you do. Use a stretch further and a stretch. Because the company I worked for Lantech, we specialize in stretch wrappers to protect product well in transit, as well as case formers in case sealers where we're, we're squaring up boxes to put product in. If I were to break that overall theme into four groups Corey, I, I. Number one talk about using less material. A lot of companies that I see out there in the industry are just playing, using too much film around their loads that are sitting on the pallet. And by optimizing the amount of film in the right places and sticking with stretch, wrap, and principles, you can optimize your film usage and really use much less than you'd think you'd need to use. And then that obviously translates to, to the corrugate material side as well. The box. Making sure that product that you're putting inside the boxes is fitting is, is fitting properly. So that's, that's number one is, you know, using less material than, than, than you need to. And then number two, and I think one of the biggest pieces that I think customers tend to overlook. Or assume that it's okay. Is the damaged piece. There was a study Cory back in 2008 by Deloitte, an independent consulting company. And that the study showed that half of 1% of all goods shipped in the United States end up in the waste stream. And of that one, half, one half of that one half or one quarter of a percent is based strictly on stretch, rapid princes. Wow. So my job and the fun part of what I get to do is educate customers on the right way to rap, because we know there's a wrong way to wrap and we're able to maintain it, repeatable, sustainable, a wrap standard with some of the technologies that that Lantech provides. So when you're rapping by hand, It's pretty hard to maintain a wrap standard because well, you know, we're all different, we're all individuals and you might wrap a load by walking around uh, differently in the morning than you might the afternoon, or even the evening or second shift. So having that repeatable standard is, is important in our industry for the sustainability. The third thing I'd mentioned is, you know, obviously the labor is hard to come by. It's hard to find, and it's also hard to keep, of course. And when, when we're talking about the labor piece, you know, we're talking about downtime with regards to certain, certain breaks that people need. And being pulled away for, for ticket purposes and things like that when they're picking product when machines are up and running, they don't call in sick. And again I'm repeating a few concepts because I think they're important that repeatable process. So people are hard to find and hard to keep. But so and then, you know, the equipment today, as far as stretch wrappers, both entry level semiautomatics and your more high speed. As well as the case rectors in case sealers they're becoming more and more robust in the industry. So they're lasting longer and they're more reliable and they speak to that uptime. That is important. So I would break it up into those four categories and those are some of the things I tell customers about.

Cory Connors: 5:39

I want to definitely focus on the the safety that, that You know, if one lost time incident costs a company about 10 to $15,000, we've done that study. So. That's about the cost of one machine for you guys. And so if you think about it that way, you know, one, one person gets injured, walking backwards around a palette. They're tired. It's into shifts there, whatever not to mention the sustainability aspect. Just saving your employees from injury possibilities. I personally wrapped many pallets in my career over different jobs and just, just getting dizzy or, you know it's, it's not a fun experience that hurts your hands. You know, there's all these different things that you can talk about us as an employee that when we've put in machines, we always get thank yous from employees. It's an exciting part. We

Matt Wirtz: 6:34

do. And, and a step further than that, the LNI piece, which is, which is one of the reasons one of the main reasons why companies will move to a semi-automatic or an automatic piece of equipment is the timescale. You know, it takes on average. If you have a standard say 40 by 48 dimensional load and say it's 50 inches or 60 inches tall, it takes a few minutes to wrap that load walking around it, whether you're putting on you know, 360 fashion, you know, 12, 13 revolutions of film around that low. It takes time and we, we, we take a look at that time as being somewhere between a minute and a half to two, maybe even two and a half minutes with a feature on our on our semiautomatics and automatics. We have a cut and clamp unit, which stages the film after every cycle. So that an operator that is running a Jeep or a fork truck can stay on the fork truck and they don't have to get off and apply the film each and every time. So we allocate that as it being, let's say rough number two minutes. So we're saving two minutes of labor as most operators out there if they don't know that I'm watching them for time studies, they'll stand around and watch the load being wrapped. Right? So that's two minutes. If they're doing say rough number 10 loads per, per hour, and then the hours of the day and the days of the week, and then into the months, you can see how that two minutes. Can be reallocated and and the process in general could be more sustainable.

Cory Connors: 8:02

Absolutely. And, and not to mention your, your fully automatic systems that are just dropping go which are incredible and impressive to say that.

Matt Wirtz: 8:13

Certainly yeah, no touch systems.

Cory Connors: 8:15

Yeah. So I wanted to talk about the different options. To me, when I think of stretch film machines, there's two options. There's the type that has a turntable. And then there's the type that turns around the load itself. Can you talk about the difference there? And w the benefits of.

Matt Wirtz: 8:35

Sure. Sure. Well, the benefit of the turntable style on a semiautomatic that just sits on your fore is that it's mobile. And because it's mobile, we can move it around to certain areas depending on the shoe. As long as it has dedicated line power. So that that's an advantage it's typically for customers that might be doing, you know, upwards of maybe 20 to 25 loads per hour and as little as just a few loads an hour. Yeah. Per that L and I piece and you know, a lot of customers and operators in general, don't like to run around the load. So so yeah, when, when we get into the rotary, semiautomatics that also just sit on the floor. Those are for loads that are being built in more of an order picked environment or a three PL logistics company. The loads are challenging to wrap, just because the loads themselves can't handle the centrifical force of turning around on a turntable. So at that point, we want to move to a rotary arm so that the load is stationary and the red zone and the arm is running around.

Cory Connors: 9:39

Okay. Cause the biases could actually fall off. The lake could fall. They could

Matt Wirtz: 9:43

fall off, they could fall off. Certainly. And then obviously we have both options on an automatic and really the only difference is between the semiautomatic and an automatic is that the automatic has what we call in feeds and exit feeds in a wrap zone that sit up off of the floor. Average is about 18 inches. So that. Can offload a pallet of product onto an in-feed and then it automatically interjects into the rep zone is wrapped and then spit out the other end on an exit fee conveyor to be picked up after. One of the thing that I did want to mention and he brought it up earlier about the sustainability of the film. You know, we talked about using less, and I don't want to forget to mention this, but is the pre-stretch capabilities as being a large difference between wrapping by hand and using equipment. On a, on a standard stretch wrapper, you're going to have somewhere between 200 and 200% film elongation. So what that means is that for every one foot. Of linear footage on an, a, on a piece or on a, on a roll of, of equipment manufactured film. You're actually applying three feet to the load. So there's that film economy right there, right there. So you're getting more containment, more film using the same amount of pounds of film as you would buy here. So that pre-stretch again, you're you're you're you're you're you're using, you're doing more with less material and that's a huge, not only cost benefit, but a sustainability benefit. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 11:50

That's so true. And many, many times we've done together. What we call in the industry cut and weighs. And will you walk us through that process? I think it's it's a no brainer. I mean, it's, it's a way to either down gauge film, which is the easy way to do it, or to go from hand film to machine.

Matt Wirtz: 12:10

Right. And that's good. And yes we, we, we have done that together many, many times, and it's really, the first step is understanding the customer's current condition, understanding how they do things the way that they've been doing it. And looking as, as taking a consultative approach, looking for ways. To improve their, the way that they do things. So part of understanding the current condition is unwrapping their load. But first I have a containment force tool where I can apply that tool to a load pull on it. And it's basically a fish scale to tell me the pounds of containment or squeezed on the load in various places. We like to measure that the top, the middle and the bottom, we can average those three measured areas together to create an overall understanding of how much squeeze they currently have on the load. And then at that point we run around the load. We find out how many revolutions they applied by hand, or they're applying with their current film. And then we bundled that film up and put it on a scale and find out how many ounces it took. For them to achieve their current condition. And then we run it back and we wrap the load on a Lantech stretch wrapper. And we'd go through the same process that we're really comparing apples to apples. So, and whether that be a hyper foot down gauging to a high-performance film whether that be increasing your gauge based on the requirements, really, the message is. Tell me about your damage. Do you have damage because we know you and I both know that there's damage out there. Everybody's got it. Whether they admit it or not, they have it. So we're our approach is, is to help them minimize or boy, you know, eliminate that damage altogether. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 13:55

I I'm fascinated by how. Simple this concept is and how. People understand how effective it is. You go into a company and they're rapping by hand. They say, oh, we don't have, we don't have CapEx for a machine, but you've got money to pay five people. You know, To, to wrap pallets all day. So it's such an interesting thing when you can come back and say, listen, you can reassign these very valuable people to do much more important things than wrap a pallet. And you can save money on stretch film. You can be more sustainable because you're using less material. It. There's so many positives to investing in Lantech machine. It's you

Matt Wirtz: 14:41

know, it's a simple, yes, absolutely. And to piggyback on that. You know, when we talk about an ROI and what's attractive to a customer, you know, we're typically talking about one and a half to two years. That's, that's kind of the benchmark where most people would either make the decision or decide to, to delay or, or, or move onto a future a future time. When we're, especially with hand wrapping, when we're w when we visit a customer, that's rapping by hand and we do this load audit process. And, and we, we show them the vision of where they could be with the automation piece, what we're doing having been through this many times as you have we're we're, we're, we're going to be doubling the squeeze on the load, the containment, and using approximately half as many ounces to do. So, not only are we going to save that two minutes of labor per, per load minute and half to two minutes, but we're also going to cut their film spend in half as well. So , using less film, but doing double the work. Saving on the, on the labor piece. And then and then obviously the cost savings involved with, with eliminating or drastically reducing the damage and, and, you know, one of the ways we can ensure that we do that Lantech, we have what we call a program called load guardian and what load guardian does. Is it identifies the type of load that you're wrapping and then automatically changes its settings to accommodate that specific load. There are about a dozen different decisions that an operator must make before wrapping a load before they can lock in their settings. How fast do I need to turn the turntable? How fast is the roll carriers need to go up and down? How much. How much top wrap do we need, how much bottom wrap what type of, what type of you know, containment do we need at the top versus the bottom in the middle? So there's a lot of decisions and we're leaving it up to operators that could be temp employees. Maybe they don't understand the principles of stretch wrapping, like, like you and I do. So load guardian enables. A customer to lock in a load profile, put a color on it, name it. And so all the operator needs to do is identify what color that load is, whether it's a blue load or a purple load or a yellow load automatically adjusts its settings to accommodate that load. Because I think you would agree, Corey, that not all loads require the same amount of film in the same amount of time.

Cory Connors: 17:08

Very true. Very true. Like a work in process load. Maybe doesn't need to be wrapped as much. It just needs a, a, a small amount of film a couple of times around whereas some something going across the country needs to be as wrapped as it gets. Very good point. I hadn't thought about that from a differentiating the load maybe there's a lighter load. That's an, a load that you could only go round twice. Something like that. Very

Matt Wirtz: 17:36

good boy. One of the things that unfortunately emphasizes damaged basis operator tweaking, when they see a load, you know, I need to put more containment or more film, increase the revolutions on this particular load. They will. The three motors on the machine, the speed of the turntable, the speed of the roll carriage and the forced to load machine the motor and in doing so, what are they remembering to move it back to where it was before it was making those decisions? How consistent can we be? So many times we don't, we can't maintain a repeatable standard. Sustainable standard of saying

Cory Connors: 18:13

when we're

Matt Wirtz: 18:13

not able to maintain that, then we're, we're, we're moving farther and farther away of what we know to be the truth with getting our products from A to B in as made

Cory Connors: 18:22

right. When we go visit a customer that has already purchased a Lantech from us, we inevitably inevitably will see a black Sharpie mark on, the dials where somebody who's in charge said, Hey guys, this is where we're going to. This is the setting. This is what works for our products. And that's usually when they have a consistent product that, that. So, yeah, it's like here when we go past this it's too much. When we go behind it, it's a, it's not a. So, and,

Matt Wirtz: 18:58

and, you know, you, you and I would encourage routine load audits as well, sometimes product and the dimensions and characteristics of the load change at, at, at, at a customer's location. And so that's why we're here to be able to, to, to create that repeatable standard for you. Certainly.

Cory Connors: 19:16

And these high performance stretch films are incredible. I mean, when you and I started in the industry, it was 80 gauge 18 inch, 80 gauge, 20 inch, 80 gauge that's, that's what people use. And then 70 gauge came out and everybody was whoa. That's amazing. Now we're talking about, I've seen 15 gauge and just. What but even do that, it works and it's you know, it has to be set correctly, but it has to do with a couple of things layering the, the, the layers of the plastic you know, back and forth like plywood is how I've been, how to describe to me Whereas it used to be just one layer or, or less than that. But what do you see as kind of the future? Do you see more innovations coming in the equipment? Do you guys have anything

Matt Wirtz: 20:02

planned? Yeah. You know, we, we do, and it has to do with customer with operator intervention or rather the touches whether it's automatic world changeover on are currently available in our high speed machine. So customers aren't having to change over a roll of film, or God forbid there'd be a film break. They don't have to change that roll of film. And and that's on our rings. Are very high-speed where we can get up into the, into the, you know, 115, 120 loads per hour type wow.

Cory Connors: 20:33

Type area. I didn't know.

Matt Wirtz: 20:35

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that's gonna, and that's going to work its way down to other automated pieces of equipment. On the case side, you know, we're doing some really creative things that are also available now. We're manufacturing and placing multiple magazine case rectors. So everybody knows that to find that that. That set up where a customer is using just one box size is very, very rare. Usually they're using multiple box sizes. We can accommodate comedy up to four different box sizes by using four magazines that hold the blank outside of the pickup. And interchangeably perform form and tape those boxes along the way. So we can do that. And then as on sticking with the case C case part of things on the ceiling and of things taping the top of the box, we have a random case. That we're really excited about. There's not many of them in the industry where they're automatically locating our machine is locating the length, width, and height of the box and automatically adjusting to it's to accommodate that particular. So

Cory Connors: 21:37

yeah, that's very impressive. Yeah. But I think a lot of people don't know that Lantech does more than stretch film machines. You guys have an incredible line of case directors and for the audience that doesn't know what that is a case erector literally takes a corrugated box and sets it up for you so that your team or your staff can load it. And then it goes through. The top taped as well. So it becomes significant automation for a warehouse shipping

Matt Wirtz: 22:06

operation. Yeah. Any, you know, just like the stretch rep side of things, or, you know, wrapping a load with product on it with a pallet When you, when you're forming and taping a box at the bottom, there is sometimes it's very challenging to not only get the box square, which is important, but also to strike the tape down with your, with your hand a taper there down the center to where it's actually taping them the major flaps properly. Sometimes you have to double Stripe that, those portions. So we do know that 30%. Th the 30% of boxes that are on square lose that stack and strength. So it's important to be squares that all four corners of the box are meeting its neighbor up, up on top and neighbor down below. And if you don't, then you're losing 30% stack. And, and so you have these loads that then downstream, you're going to be wrapping. They're going to be late. Are going to be able to. So we're, we're all about trying to create more a or framed loads as possible to wrap in our case. Erectors help us do that by creating square boxes.

Cory Connors: 23:14

That's incredible. I a lot of people don't know stacking vertically is the right way to do it. The, the chimney stack used to be very common and where you stack it, like stack your boxes, like bricks where they're overlapping each other with the. Addition of a Lantech stretch film machine. You can very easily stock your corrugated boxes vertically, which is the most efficient way and the strongest way. So that's another benefit I hadn't thought about for a stretcher. Yeah, absolutely. Good idea. Yeah. So Matt, thank you so much for your time today. It's been awesome to see you again. It's been many years we've worked together. What's what's the best way for the audience to get home.

Matt Wirtz: 23:59

Well, you don't, you could, I would suggest going to lantech.com and looking at what we have available. We really emphasize a lot of the principles that we spoke about today with the features and options we have available. So or you can call when it a hundred Lantech.

Cory Connors: 24:15

That's awesome to hear a phone number. It's so rare these days, but one thing we didn't mention what the was that these machines are made right here in the USA and in Kentucky. Is that, is that yeah. Yep.

Matt Wirtz: 24:26

Louisville, Kentucky, all parts, all manufacturing. That's amazing

Cory Connors: 24:31

right out of local Kentucky. What an amazing company. And thank you again, Matt, for your time. I'd like to think Landsberg ORORA for your sponsorship and support of this podcast for all you listeners and viewers, please rate this and tell your friends about us so we can make more episodes. Thank you so much again, Matt.

Matt Wirtz: 24:49

Thank you, Cory . Appreciate it.