Sunday, January 22, 2012

The Light Is Always Green at Stamar Packaging


As part of our effort at constant self-evaluation and improvement, Stamar Packaging is forever adopting new practices and procedures that will enable us to improve the quality of our products, services, and facility capabilities. We are also deeply committed to improving the relationship between industry and the natural environment, especially in a business such as ours – packaging – that stands at the crossroads of so much concerning the future sustainability of the planet. 

To that effect, we’ve put our money where our mouth is. Recently, we contracted a green lighting company to install new, energy-efficient “green electricity” for our distribution centers in Addison, IL, Memphis, TN, and Nashville, TN. The company is refurbishing Stamar’s old, traditional lighting with innovative, energy-saving solutions. We’ve cast away and recycled 244 metal halide fixtures in our warehouse, replacing them with 218 4 lamp T5 480V fixtures with daylight/occ sensors. In our fulfillment department, we’ve removed the 18 metal halide fixtures, refurbishing them with mere 4 lamp T5 480V fixtures with daylight/occ sensors. These sensors can measure the amount of natural light coming inside our factory, adjusting themselves automatically to the light as it comes in.

The fact is, lighting can actually damage the environment. How so? It causes air pollution, since the electricity in your facility is connected directly via the power-grid to a power plant, which most commonly burns coal, oil, or gas. As result, pollutants such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury get released into the atmosphere, contributing to environmental problems such as global warming, acid rain, and smog.

We’re a company that believes more in solutions than in problems. Not only does this wiser energy policy save us money in the long-term, cutting our estimated maintenance costs down a full $219,571 in the next five years, but it allows us to practice the message we advocate: that in order for American industry to flourish in the 21st century, there must be less energy consumption while maintaining the same quality standards of production.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

A New Standard for Long-Distance Freight Packaging


You’ve probably seen it once or twice in your driving lives, watched – half in humor, half in horror—as oranges or tomatoes trickled, one by one, off the back of the produce truck and splattered along the highway just a few meters ahead of your speeding car. Besides being an annoyance and even a hazard to your interstate driving, it’s also one of the more common ways worldwide that produce gets lost on its way to market: faulty packaging that breaks in transit.

To solve this problem, the Fiber Box Association (FBA), the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA) as well as nationwide box manufacturers, growers, freight companies, produce distribution centers, retailers, and various government agencies, have all teamed up and arrived at a new solution. They’ve come up with a higher standard model for packaging fruits and veggies for long-distance transport: the Corrugated Common Footprint container.

The Corrugated Common Footprint container is a new and light-weight corrugated box that employs interlocking tabs and receptacles to provide better stability and lower shipping costs (always a good thing) for produce. The box’s inner air cushioning also makes it a lot harder for produce to bruise on its way to market. Not only that, but its standard-issue design and consistency make it simple for different box manufacturers, growers, and shippers to collaborate on wildly different varieties of cargo. With the new Corrugated Common Footprint container, it’s all of one piece and one box.

Who knew there were still ways to revolutionize boxes?