Product Page - Mora, Carlos & Garcia-Romeu, Manuel: Business Case: Stretch Film Optimization for a Manufacturer of Beer Using Testing Technologies for Load Unit Stability, 2019

The brewing company of  this business case, in its strategic framework as a company, is reducing the CO2 emissions of the products that they manufacture and distribute. In recent years they have been reducing the carbon footprint of their products mainly acting on the impact on the primary and secondary packaging. Currently the reduction of thickness in the primary and secondary packaging has reached its maximum but they still have the necessity to reduce the carbon footprint even more. For this they were wondering if the stretchable film currently used of 23 microns cast film, as tertiary packaging, it could be reduced without affecting the stability of the cargo they transport, since although the reduction of CO2 emissions is an important point in their framework strategic as a company, transport safety is even more important to avoid possible damage to third parties due to a lack of stability of the palletized units they transport. In the project, three of the most manufactured products were chosen, bottles of 1 liter of beer, 1/3 bottles and 33cl cans. They were first subjected to a study of stability obtaining the level of acceleration that currently presents these palletized load by applying horizontal acceleration tests. After this, a new wrapping scheme was defined and a new blown film material from DUOPLAST of 15 microns DDK was used, with the aim of obtaining the same level of horizontal acceleration with respect to the initial tests. After the optimization and the final acceleration tests, it was possible to reduce the average film consumption per pallet by 37.5%, approximately 103 grams on average per pallet wrapped. Likewise, it was possible to increase the wrapping capacity / production of up to 28% more than average wrapping capacity currently. With regard to the reduction of the carbon footprint, savings of 33% of total CO2 emissions were achieved on average per pallet wrapped, which for a production volume of 1,800,000 pallets per year, the total savings due to the use the new DUOPLAST film and the methodology / technology of tests applied to the study, would be of 337 tons of annual CO2 emissions savings.