It has taken months of study and testing, but in the end, we are very proud: the new Bonomi Industries easy opening boxes have exceeded expectations and will replace all our old packaging over the coming months.
Until recently, in fact, the cartons used to ship our valves around the world were taped closed and, when they reached their destinations, customers opened them with the aid of cutters. The new boxes, which we have called “easy opening”, are sealed with glue alone – just like a letter – and have pre-cuts so that they can be opened easily without using cutters or tools of any kind.
“It was not easy to design this new type of packaging because we had to take the robustness factor very seriously”, says Ivan Falardi, who helped create the new cartons. “The boxes had to be strong and stable enough to stack on pallets.”
Another important feature of these new boxes is the ability to close and re-open them several times without adhesive tape. New pre-cut lines create dovetail tabs when opened. The tabs are on the sides of the top flap, and remain attached to the box so that it can be opened and closed without detaching. When the top flap is lowered onto the box, the dovetail tabs can be moved and interlocked firmly on the base to hold the box closed. Conversely, the tabs can be released easily from their slots in order to open the box.
Being able to re-close them is an advantage because, for example, if the products inside have to be stored in the warehouse for some time, they remain protected against dust.
“Like most of our suppliers, the manufacturer of punched flat blanks for packaging is also local, which further reduces CO2 emissions,” Falardi explains, “our in-house forming machines erect the cartons using a few dots of glue.” Once erected, automatic conveyors transfer the cartons to designated bays, where “our operators carefully place the products in the packaging.
The full boxes then leave and go to the closing machines, which seal them with glue and label them, again with glue, after which they are transferred to the high-density automatic vertical warehouse. On receiving the sales order, the packaged material is picked up automatically by a robot, which places it on a pallet while the packing list is created automatically. Once the pallets have been completed, they are sealed, weighed and labelled for shipment to our customers, all automatically.”
Bonomi Industries’ packaging is therefore totally sustainable: it does not use adhesive tape or staples, it is made of recycled brown material that has not been chemically bleached. Our packaging is fully recyclable at the end of its life.
