Sustainable Packaging
Industry Experts discuss all the new materials and ways that packaging can be more sustainable and how we can do our parts to help recycle and reuse. Sustainable Packaging is and will continue to affect us all in our daily lives. We have lots of fun and get down to the real data of what's working to help our planet!
Sustainable Packaging
Big Announcement! KraftPal Corrugated Pallets and Orora Packaging
Interested in using these new pallets? use this link:
https://ororapackagingsolutions.com/lp/kraftpal-corrugated-pallets/
What if you could reduce your pallet carbon footprint by 76%?
How about reducing your pallets shipping weight from over 60 pounds to under 15 pounds?
Did you know these KraftPal pallets are being produced in California?
Check out our sponsor Orora Packaging Solutions
https://ororapackagingsolutions.com/
FREE TRIAL for Trayak
https://ecoimpact.trayak.com/trial-registration
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/
I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap.
This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.
Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors
Brodie Vander Dussen:and Brodie Vander Dussen
Cory Connors:we are very excited today to introduce Martin Fishman from craft pal. Martin and I met a long time ago and we'll tell that story during this episode, but, it was a very serendipitous meeting and, what's come of that meeting has turned into something really exciting in the industry. It's brand new. And, this is a huge announcement for a new product line. And, that will be locally made domestically made and a total new sustainable option. Brody. Let's start the show here.
Brodie Vander Dussen:Thank you. Yeah, we're really excited about this. I think the announcement that you guys have to share is going to be a really big game changer for the industry. so before we get into kind of what that is and what that looks like, Martin, do you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? KraftPal a little bit of an intro.
Martin Fishman:Excellent. Thanks for having me. very pleased to partner with Orora Landsberg. And I think this is, really a ideal opportunity for our mutual engagement. so KraftPal has been around for over 10 years. We are a European headquartered organization out of Slovenia, Europe. We have our financial holding company in the U. K. And we are now opening our first debut and showcase right here in Southern California in the Inland Empire, the hub of all logistics and the center of really transportation movement here. so we are, we're really, delighted to be here. And we have been, introducing this product now to a number of, strategic partners, people that are looking at this as. the best solution for the future of helping save the environment and participate in lowering the amount of material used from a tree. My background just as a brief background and I'm really excited to evangelize and create this paradigm change with our pallets. I've been in the high tech industry for about 40 years. Helped introduce PCs to the world early on when they first came out, things that really contribute to a lifestyle or economics or business development are areas where I really enjoy and take great satisfaction. And when our CEO approached me a couple of years ago, and he said to me, listen, I have a, I have an interesting opportunity for you. we are, in the pallet business. Would you like to join us? And immediately my mind went to a wood pallet. And I said, I don't think so. I have been very focused on technology and I don't think I want to be in such a commodity level business where you really have a tough time differentiating. when I got through the depth of this opportunity and I realized that It's all about sustainability, green technology, recyclability, and the environment. And to be a part of that in this next future path for me, I said, I'm on board. And so that's the long story short and something I really believe is, truly in my heart and soul. Because. I like really not just about talking about great new technologies that have been very successful and applicable. But this, to me, really sets the paradigm change. And when Corey and I first met, and we started to talk about this, I saw his eyes flash wide open and recognize the opportunity. And we'll tell that story. I guess a little bit more Corey through this discussion today. But, yeah, For me, it was a terrific marriage made in heaven in many ways.
Brodie Vander Dussen:That's awesome. Yeah. I'm very excited to hear that story. I don't think I've heard it yet, so I'm looking forward to that. Chris, you mind telling us a little bit about what you do at Orora , where we are today. and how Orora plays into the craft belt without the announcement, but just a little bit of an intro.
Chris Bradley:Sure. my name's Chris Bradley. I'm the chief marketing design and sustainability officer at Aurora packaging solutions. I'm all about bringing sustainability, new technologies. I run our sustainable design lab, really trying to bring cutting edge, new technologies to the market and to our customers. working with, Brody and Corey out there, identifying new technologies and new companies that are on the market that we know that our customers can get a big benefit. we run LCA tools and other things so we can assess all of the new technologies that are coming onto the market. So that's really my role is, facilitating that and working with companies like, like Martins.
Cory Connors:you're very humble, sir. Both of you are. And I think that, what you've done is set a new precedent in the industry and we are leading the way with your leadership. And I'm thankful for all you've done, Chris. it's been amazing. And I'm excited about this next few years. I think we've laid a lot of the groundwork in the 1st, couple of years of your, employment here. sir. But, what's gonna really gonna happen in the future here is it's exciting. Martin, let's, let's tell that story about how we met. This will be fun.
Martin Fishman:Yeah, great. so there we were. We have a trade show event in Anaheim every year called Westpac. at least that's the portion of that trade show that's focused on packaging and manufacturing and automation. And so I said, okay, this is going to be my 1st step into this new area of industry. And so I chose to go to the show. And there we were in the front lobby and I had a, financial person working with me there at the show and somehow Corey and I just came to be and we cross paths. And so there I am walking around with my mini palette and we're now in pure evangelizing stage. This is a company even without a building or a structure yet in the US. And so I'm beginning to show this little mini palette around. Corey was one of the first people that did immediate dive into. What is that all about? And I saw his. I wish I brought it Corey with me. I still have your little badge. you're sewn, that you would sew on. What do we call that? I guess a patch. I still have your patch. I think about that often from the day we met and he handed it to me and he said, we really should talk on. So that was just the beginning of what he immediately recognized was an area where Orora Landsberg should take advantage and pursue this on. And I, of course, immediately saw what Aurora was all about. I came to better understand and learn what level of infrastructure and capability that. aurora had and what they could offer us and what we possibly could offer them. And I'm very humble because I recognize that I'm the new vendor. Aurora Landsberg is the established, very successful, great history credibility that you look for in any partner. And so when I saw all of that and I recognize Corey can be my ambassador and we should both work together to evangelize this within We both took off and it became an ideal opportunity. And since then, we've had great stewardship with Brody, Chris, Abe Hanna , everybody at the senior exec level has embraced and looked at this. And there are many applications that we see together. I don't, I want to answer all of that in this 1 brief overview, because it's all about how we met Corey. but we've now explored the many different paths by which this product is going to go to market and how it's going to be introduced. And we don't expect the reality is, of course, we're, we're pursuing an industry with potential great growth, but we're also recognizing that it takes a little bit of time for people to absorb and take advantage of this game changer of a palette. And we've got an old school mentality out there. That's I've been using what pallets all my life. Why should I ever consider it? there's a lot of facts that we can talk about on this discussion today. Why you should. And what the future is all about and where we want to go together. So this is why what Chris has been working on and how that's being evangelized. Couldn't be more complimentary to where and how we can proceed together. That's great.
Brodie Vander Dussen:Wow. I didn't know it was Westpac that you guys met. That's great. What a great show to be at. And, innovations are everywhere there. So that's awesome. I am a holding for those who are watching a, mini KraftPal this doesn't carry that much of a load because it's a mini. Can you tell me a little bit about what a KraftPal is? What the bigger version of this looks like what it does the capabilities and what makes it so cool.
Martin Fishman:Absolutely. I would challenge you, by the way, to say. It does hold a lot more weight than you think you can stand on it. Brodie and I would not necessarily encourage you to do that right now. Okay. Because what I want you to recognize is that the pallet has an underlying infrastructure. Sure. of these cross bars and beams. And if you look at a wood pallet with the same idea in mind and you recognize the wood pallet has slats, you could never stand on this area, okay? But you could put your full body weight on any one of these structured beams. We call SFLs and longways, they're called LFLs. But it'll support your full body weight and our pallets when we talk a little bit more about them that, of course, they will support and exceed even 5000 pounds. but I would suggest that any palette you would stand on. You always want to make sure you're standing on the strongest points. And even when you're applying any of your cartons and crates, you want to create an even load because that's going to be your best way to use a pallet, Our studs run across the bottom. And that's where the real strength is. but that's not a problem in shipping, but the pallet themselves. when we look at what's involved here, this is using a high grade quality material, corrugate material, being sourced from Orora. They, as our supplier, and the right formulation of material, and that's an important technical aspects to the product, because we need a certain grade. Of cardboard that will withstand moisture that will be strong enough to be reliable and go through many cross dock cycles and movements over transportation. And so we have a mixture of. Primarily virgin material target, and then some balance of recyclability. All to make for a recyclable palette, because every piece of material that we're using in this, which is really simple. It's cargo. It's glue, environmentally friendly, recyclable glue. We have absolutely baked that into our process of how we're going to deliver a 100 percent recycled product. And now we have really the makings of a product line that is quite broad and extensive and what we're going to do to meet the various needs of our customers going from heavy duty, medium duty and lightweight duty types of products. And we'll talk about various different designs and sizes.
Cory Connors:Thank you, Martin. Well said. Chris, there are, corrugated pallets on the market. And this is not a new thing. But what makes KraftPal so new and so unique, as to those current versions?
Chris Bradley:Yeah, we've been evaluating corrugated pallets multiple times over the past decade. but when we saw the KraftPal pallet for the 1st time, I knew it was really something different it. the way that it was structurally put together, we've had some before where you would spend so much labor trying to put that pallet together that it really wasn't even worth. the process. If you see, the Palatinators, what they call it, it's basically a robotic system for assembling these pallets. It'll absolutely blow your mind. It's modern manufacturing at its finest that can pop out a pallet in 45 seconds. That's fully robotically assembled and the joints and the structure of how it goes together. it's a marvel. It's an engineering marvel. and I saw that we looked at the weight. the economics of it are incredible. A lot of our customers ship things like, a lot of air freight. We do a lot of cold chain shipping and things like that. You can take a pallet that they're using today. That's 60 pounds and swap that out for a 15 or 13 pound pallet. The savings just in the air freight costs alone, more than pay for the pallet. So to me, it was a no brainer. It was, wow, how do we get this? How do we offer this to our customers? and as soon as I saw that they could actually make them fast, and they were coming off the line, and we could co locate in similar areas so that we could really have a really seamless supply chain. To me, it made sense that this was something that was going to change the industry.
Brodie Vander Dussen:Wow. And so Martin mentioned something about it being made with mostly virgin material and some recycled material. Are these recyclable?
Chris Bradley:Yes, absolutely. So it's fully recyclable, curbside recyclable. You can take the parts apart. even sometimes, like, a lot of companies would send, say, it's a bath product or something like that. And it gets sent to your home. I don't know if you guys have ever had this and now you have this wood palette. What do you do with it? If you receive something on a craft palette, you can basically disassemble it or cut it up and put it right in your blue bin. It's fully recyclable and while it may come with it. Some virgin, and some recycled material in the board layup, the pallet itself is completely recyclable in any recycling system.
Brodie Vander Dussen:And that's very impressive.
Martin Fishman:Brody, may I add on? I think Chris hit on all the key points there on recyclability, but what matters most is that the circular economy. Is what we're trying to a feed. we want to aspire that all of our raw materials that are produced today. It doesn't matter whether it's a pallet or a bottle of some sort that it will go back and be recyclable and reused once again. the mixture that we're putting into our palate, because it must meet a certain heavy duty. Weight grade of being able to ship over 5, 000 pounds on is requiring a certain grade of target with virgin being a high percentage, but as it goes through recycling, it's feeding into that system. And you can make anything you want out of this target. Once it's reused. And 1
Chris Bradley:more thing, just to add that, if you just look at the weight difference, let's be honest, corrugated is made from wood. And a wood pallet is made from wood, so you get the same function and something that weighs 13 pounds versus 60 pounds. So all of that is extra weight. if you just look at all that, you can take all that extra weight and make dozens of other products and pallets with it. that's what's so promising about it. It's more efficient use of material.
Martin Fishman:That's a great point. so weight that Chris brings up is such a key factor, but I want to add a couple other elements and now we're talking about safety. the most common medical or health related issues in warehouses and production facilities today. relates to weight because you think about you're lofting a 60 or 70 pound pallet all the time back on another stack. Okay. And you look at what that does to your back or your arms or wherever you're going to be compromised. That's a huge impact issue when you're lifting a It's a no brainer. Any one of the people we ever show our palates to can actually lift it with two fingers on both sides of the palate. Second and third is the injury factor of no nails, no splinters. There is never any compromise that way. And that's a clear, major benefit that we see as improving the work safety of all of our customers.
Cory Connors:said. My first job in the industry was miscellaneous worker for a warehouser. And that was my illustrious title. And one of my first jobs was sorting pallets in the pallet yard all day. And I was 18 and I could do that. And I could lift these 80 or 90 pound pallets. It was crazy. But I would go home and I'd fall over and I would have all kinds of Cuts and scratches, but you're exactly right. Pallets, wood pallets are very heavy, especially when they're wet, which happens here in Oregon very often. So this solution is very fascinating to me. Martin, Chris mentioned, export as a great option for this, pallet and, cold chain shipping. Are there any other markets that should really be, glomming towards this new product?
Martin Fishman:yes, great point. so picking up on those 2 elements, clearly we are a moisture resistant material on our pallet when produce has tremendous strength structurally. And whether it's in minus 40 degree Fahrenheit. freezing temperature, which one of our customers is using and shipping globally, or in refrigeration, just in local transport, we see that as a very applicable opportunity and clearly a big benefit to all customers that are using and that's those environments. But some of the key markets and let's talk about really. of our pallet versus a tr pallet. our pallet ri is sterile, heat treated ISP. M. 15 compliant capable and recognized to And import. Here we are in Southern California, and we're shipping and we're right near the Ontario airport, and we have tremendous interest from some of the air freight carriers right here, and we're talking to some of them right now, and we're encouraging them to recognize this paradigm change. So they're looking at the air freight benefit and the weight change because we all want to see a greater savings on fuel on and the markets that are recognizing whether it's export or import, there is a lot of cross border going out as well as in the Mexican production just below the border. That's being all these industries that are producing electronics and other types of materials. Are now being shipped back into the U. S. Our pallet is very relevant to come back into the country so that there's a clean type of pallet to take advantage of there. the transportation and logistics is tremendous. There's a ton of E. V. major, trucking companies coming to market, and some of those brands are tremendous. And what are they looking for most? I know when you're pulling any kind of weight, if you're with your own SUV and you have a boat and you're pulling a boat, you're going to burn a lot more fuel. in this case, if you've got an EV that's dependent on a battery and you're pulling that much more weight, we need to help our customers recognize that You're going to take a tremendous percentage of weight out of that load if you're using a corrugate pallet versus a wood pallet. So there's some real advantage in transportation and logistics and the markets that really are recognizing the value of a cargo pallet are things like the pharmaceutical industry. Medical instruments, parts of any sort that are going and shipping to smaller dealerships and locations where there's servicing and installations and things going on. The last thing they need is more pallets sitting in their yard that they can't dispose of while they get boxes and parts on those pallets along with a corrugated pallet. That's a winner and clearly expresses the A real customer interest as we are providing for our customers because by helping them see this and recognize it. And I know Aurora is going to be very much involved in and participating in that supply of the pallets along with their goods. This is helping all the customers realize this whole advantage.
Brodie Vander Dussen:my wheels are turning on like how really, truly how accessible this is to every industry and applicable, I want to talk a little bit more about the Palettinator that you mentioned. truthfully, it does sound more like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie than a palette creator. Can you tell us a little bit more about the process and what truly makes it what you call an engineering marvel? what, from your perspective?
Chris Bradley:I'm happy to give my perspective. This is really Martin's baby, but, it is, completely fully robotic. They have, like, 1 or 2 operators can basically run this entire shift and it's just. Folding. Gluing combining things together, and it goes through this miraculous process. And then you just have pallets is coming out, like, every 45 seconds or a minute at the end of the line. So the throughput is pretty awesome. I've spent a lot of my career in automation and robotics and things like that. And I was really impressed when I 1st saw this, I saw a video in Slovenia of this machine running, but now we have 1 right here. In Ontario and Southern California, it's pretty, pretty exciting to see that level of automation. And that's what I think really separates craft pal from some of the other corrugated pallets. Again, the idea of a corrugated pallet is not new, but the way that they're manufacturing assemble, it's just such a tight well, put together product that you don't have to worry about, like, hey, did the. The assembler who put it together that day make a mistake and you're going to have 100 percent consistency through the product. And that's you can only get that with robotic automation.
Brodie Vander Dussen:Martin, do you have anything to add to that?
Martin Fishman:Yeah, I think Chris did a great job explaining what it is. So I don't want to be redundant on it, but let me suggest that there's, we're about 10 years old as a company. This Palatinator is on the 5th generation of design and electrical engineering. That is really, I got to tell you, it's one of the key reasons why when I joined this organization, I looked at that and what its capability was. That's a wow. Okay. and the movement and the capabilities and preciseness from the components. And let's just say there's about five separate corrugate material components that are fed into various bays of the palatinator. and there is that manual labor involved because it's like a copier. You can't print on a copier unless you have paper in the paper tray. the same is true here. We need our corrugated materials in these loading base and those 5 components. can run for quite a while and each one of them is robotically being moved around and simultaneously each of those components are being processed in different ways and folded and compressed and glued and it all comes together miraculously in the end output in pallets that's however many high we're going to ship to our customers And then balloon wrapped in a clean way so that once it's going off the line, it will ship and be received so that sterility and capability that we originally marketed is going to be maintained. But just to conclude, it's a fantastic machine, and we invite anyone and everyone that's interested in coming to tour and see this. We've got colleges and universities studying it now. here we are in the Atlanta Empire, and we've got a lot of schools that are pinging me to say, I want to help encourage, the people that live here and recognize not only is this a major new product, but your technology and producing and how you do it is fantastic. so it's really, it's terrific to be a part of something that's so unique and interesting. and Chris's point, there's others that have tried this. Nobody's perfected it and has advanced it as closely as we have.
Cory Connors:Awesome news. is the palletinator up and running? Where do we buy these things? Is it, are we producing pallets today?
Martin Fishman:Yes. Yeah. our, by the way, I didn't even formally correctly introduce myself. I am the president. Okay. And we've been working on facilitating and getting the entire infrastructure of the facility set up. We have met all the conditions in code of the county and the city. And, we have, various stages of engineering's and technicians that have been fine tuning the palletinator and we are currently producing live, actual pallets. so our plan right now is we are going to market. We are sampling with many of our customers. Aurora is actually taking many of these out to their customers and showcasing them and allowing people to feel touch. Begin using. let us have the proof is in the pudding. you take these pallets, run them, ship them. Move them around your conveyors, cross docks, wherever and however you want to move this and let there be various touch points. we're really glad to be, giving that feel and touch the people so they can take advantage of it. so the pallets today are being produced. We are sampling and we're ready to go into high volume with customer demand as it comes along, and we're able to produce at that level. If you imagine what it's like, we can produce a lot of pallets when we talk about 45 seconds per pallet. So the market's going to dictate how much volume we're going to produce in short time. We already have considerable inventory. And on November 14 at 10am. We're going to have our official ribbon cutting and grand opening. We have dignitaries coming from the California Economic Development from Gavin Newsom's office. We have county officials and dignitaries, local, the mayor of Ontario is going to facilitate the ribbon cutting, and Aurora will be there presenting and representing us as a symbiotic partner where we can bring this to market together. So we're ecstatic that we're just on the cusp of doing this in the fourth quarter of 2024 to really bring a great, healthy opportunity to the world. Wow. I think
Brodie Vander Dussen:this brings a lot of value both to Orora and to craft pal this partnership together. Chris, I think the question for you is How does this product fit so well into the line of Orora's sustainable packaging?
Chris Bradley:So I think a lot of what, a lot of what we do and the value that I would say that Orora is providing in the market is we have a lot of sophisticated customers that are trying to figure out how to achieve their sustainability goals. And so my team, really lives in this whole world of life cycle analysis, carbon footprint analysis. And so we're routinely, doing dozens of these now per week. Where we are helping companies look at a carbon footprint of their supply chain or of a product line. when we started adding in, if you add a KraftPal pallet to, each 1 of these truckloads of shipments for products. It has a 76 percent reduction in carbon footprint just on the pallet. If you switch from a wood pallet over to a KraftPal pallet, so we annualize that. And we've been showing that to customers to say, look, we'll help you change your packaging to make it more sustainable. And this would be the impact. But we're also going to look at the. the secondary and the tertiary components and part of that is that transportation packaging and this is where the KraftPal pallet comes in. There's also other benefits that we've seen. a lot of our customers have fine instruments, or maybe they're selling food products that can be broken during transport and corrugated has incredible cushioning characteristics that wood just doesn't have. and so we've also been able to show, hey. You're not going to have as much damage to your product. And we can also calculate what that. Value is so I think more and more, and you will see this in the market in the future. People aren't going to be looking at. Hey, what is the price of the pallet ? Yeah, that is important, but they're going to be looking at the total impact from a carbon footprint from a product loss and other things and when you start looking at that in a holistic way, that KraftPal pallet , I think is a no brainer for a lot of industries, not for everything, but there are certain kind of industries where. We're gonna, we're gonna see a big migration to this type of technology.
Cory Connors:Well said. I agree. Very exciting, Chris. Thank you, Martin. And thank you Abe Hanna. A special shout out to him. He has done so much work to make sure the corrugated we provide for this pallet is performing correctly and performing well and is still sustainable too. so very exciting to promote this, new product line and, look forward to seeing more from craft palette in the future. Thank you all. Thank you. Appreciate your time.
