Bale up! Smart waste solution 

• Smart baling system stops triple-handling of carboard waste
• The auto-baling system saves the company 32 man days or around € 10 000 a year

Cannon Packing and Logistics, a contract packaging company in Oxfordshire, started re-organising their waste management process, allowing staff to focus on their core activities rather than endless waste handling (loading and unloading cardboard boxes into pallets, then onto a pallet truck before being baled). The firm purchased an 'AutoLoadBaler' with collection carts to transport waste from different places in the business to the compacting and baling machine.

A thorough waste audit was conducted at the company, which identified how labour intensive the existing vertical baler was. Cannon bales over 20 tonnes of cardboard per month, consisting mainly of small- to medium-sized boxes generated from 1.75 million packs. These loose boxes were being double handled, firstly by the packing team putting them into pallet boxes, then they were collected by a member of the waste team on a pallet truck, and handled again when placed into the existing baler. This process would take 10-15 minutes per pallet box.

Key results

The AutoLoadBaler and 15 collection carts introduced at the source of the waste eliminates double- and triple-handling, which saves 15 man hours per week. That adds up to 32 days or around € 10 000 in savings a year. Payback on the investment is likely to be within two years.