Touching the void
Void fill is one of our biggest selling items. And one of our biggest. If we’re delivering to a local customer – in Derby, Nottingam or Mansfield, for example – that’s not a problem. We can throw it into one of our own vans and run it over ourselves.
But when it needs to go further, we rely on couriers to deliver it and they’re less keen on filling their trucks with sacks and sacks of the stuff. We pay the same to have a couple of bags of flow pack delivered as we do for one tape dispenser, so the more 15 cubic metre bags there are in a van, the less parcels overall they can fit in, the higher the cost per delivery.
In short, if we try to send more than three to the same address at the same time, they charge us more. That’s why if you order more than three bags at a time, they arrive over a number of days.
A luxury of choice in void fill…
Anyway, I’ve already digressed from the point of this post, which is to tell you about our most recent loose fill packing peanuts. Each new version coming onto the market seems to be getting even kinder to the environment and our latest, a Sealed Air product called PakNatural, is certainly no different. Our other one, Flo-Pak Green, is already a great bit of loosefill packaging, as it’s made from 100% recycled EPS (expanded polystyrene) material, degrades within 9-50 months in the presence of micro-organisms and, of course, is fully recyclable and reusable. It’s also currently 17p a bag cheaper than the PakNatural.
The PakNatural, meanwhile, is made from non-food and non-proto-chemical (ie recycled material that isn’t EPS) renewables, and also happens to be compostable, hydrophobic (water repellent, so it won’t shrink in high humidity), anti static and virtually dust free. Suddenly that 17p a bag extra doesn’t seem so much, does it? It also looks like cheesy wotsits (although I can’t see ‘packing cheesy wotsits’ catching on as an accepted term in the way that packing peanuts has!).
…but don’t use them to fill that void!
Whether they taste like cheesy wotsits I couldn’t tell you, and I’m not going to be the one to find out. However, as I pointed out in one of my other blogs, there is apparently a loose fill product on the market which is unofficially edible and which tastes like Weetabix. I’m certainly not recommending it, but if any of you are so brave (or foolhardy) as to sample either of ours, do please leave a comment and let us know what they taste like!
Dave Smith
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