‘Blinds packaged neatly and quickly’
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f ^ ‘IT IS ONE OF OUR MOST POPULAR MACHINES' VJ ■ NOVATRADE USES BANDING TO OPTIMISE PACKAGING PROCESS ‘Blinds packaged neatly and quickly' Novatrade produces insect screens and window decorations for the business to business market. The company has recently started to package the window decorations using a BandaLL banding machine. This saves the manufacturer materials and time. According to director Meindert Tuinstra, the tightly wrapped pLeated bLinds aLso Look better. When the company was established in 2006, the founders, Meindert Tuinstra and Koos Poppema, defined the following five principles for Novatrade: use high-grade materials, offer expert advice, provide fast and reliable deliveries, be solution-oriented, and offer honest prices. This allowed the company to establish a solid reputation within the B2B market, while achieving stable growth. Manufacturers and suppliers of windows, as well as interior design stores, offer their customers tailor-made insect screens and pleated blinds successfully. ‘BANDING HOLDS THE BLINDS TOGETHER VERY NICELY' 'A high-quality product must be accompanied by high-quality packaging’, believes Tuinstra. 'This is why we decided to critically evaluate our packaging a while ago, and one of the conclusions was that we had to improve on how our window decoration was packaged.’ Demo Tuinstra offers an example. Folded pleated blinds, wrapped with a film band. 'Pleated blinds need to be held together during the installation’, he explains. 'A band does this very well. Once installed, the fitter cuts the band and the blinds are ready to use.’ 'Previously, we manually placed tape around our window decoration. This required a lot more work and the final result didn’t look as good. The tape that we applied was often not straight, and was sometimes wrapped too many times. As our products are also supplied to interior design stores, we want everything to look neat and tidy. They also have to be packaged quickly, which is why we went to look for an alternative. Via the internet, we eventually found Bandall. Account manager at Bandall, Jan Musch, recently visited Novatrade with a demo machine. After the demo, Tuinstra was quickly convinced that banding was a better solution. 'To us, it represented a significant investment, but it certainly is worth the money. We use the Bandall machine every day and are able to save on time and materials, while the packaging also looks much better.’ plate which is used to tightly band small, hard products. 'A small, thin sealing plate means less tension is lost’, says Erik de Roos. 'The standard sealing plate is thicker and wider, this doesn’t affect larger products when the sealing plate is removed after the banding process. However, the band becomes too loose for small and hard products. Packaging process The Bandall machine is a useful tool to quickly bundle the products, as the packaging process for our pleated blinds is performed manually. The process starts with banding the folded blinds, this way they can no longer unfold. The packer applies three bands, and the blind is then inserted into a plastic cover that is then sealed shut. The packer then sticks everything to a sheet of cardboard, and rolls it up to create a diagonal tube. The packer then places a cardboard cover on both ends, and places bands around the two ends and the middle, thus creating a nicely packaged product. Stand Alone 'It is one of our most popular machines’, says Erik de Roos, account manager at Bandall. 'This Stand Alone model is used by printing companies, pharmaceutical companies, the textile industry, producers of cosmetics, and various other companies where custom-made solutions are needed.’ Novatrade has a Stand Alone BA 32-20-30. The numbers refer to the banding arch, which has a width of 32 cm, a height of 20 cm, and a channel width of 30 millimetres. Both the arch and the channel width are available in different sizes. In addition, the machines can be expanded with various options. For example, Novatrades machine contains a narrow sealing Monofilm The band used by Novatrade is a 28 mm-wide PP monofilm of 50 microns. The use of a thin film band is a characteristic of the Bandall machines, explains De Roos. 'Our banding machines are equipped with an advanced vacuum transport system that transports the band through the banding arch. This makes it possible to use very thin bands, thus reducing materials and cost. Other systems push the band through the channel of the banding arch, which requires them to use thicker film.’ This is also one of the reasons why Novatrade decided to buy one of Bandalls banding machines, adds Meindert Tuinstra. 'We require quite a lot of film and cardboard to make sure that our screens and blinds are undamaged when they reach the customer. This is why we try to optimize our process wherever possible. And using bands to hold our blinds together is a good example of this.’ This article was written in cooperation with Bandall. bandall THE STANDARD IN BANDING