The Home Stretch: Crawford Packaging Featured in Canadian Packaging Magazine

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THE HOME STRETCH

Leading Canadian packaging machinery and supplies distributor leverages hands-on collaboration to launch innovative breakthrough solutions into the market

By George Guidoni, Editor

Some packaging distributors are renowned for their knowledge of packaging machinery, some excel at packaging materials and consumables, and some pride themselves on outstanding service.

And while there’s a lot to be said for being good at any one of these core competencies, there is no substitute for continuously striving to be best-in-class in each of these areas to offer end-use customers superlative value propositions and solutions that are bigger than the sums of their parts.

Founded in 1963 In London, Ont., Crawford Packaging’s rise to industry prominence as an elite supplier of innov-

ative customized packaging solutions was emphatically underscored about a year ago with the opening of a brand new Automation Experience Centre in Mississauga, Ont.—a multipurpose facility dedicated to equipment test runs, live demonstrations, hands-on customer training, and continuous research and innovation in the field of packaging automation.

As such, the 40,000-square-foot facility is a frequent meeting place for leading packaging machinery OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and materials suppliers to collaborate on new projects and technological advances with input from Crawford’s exceptionally knowledgeable staff eager to share their collective expertise across the packaging value chain with their cus-

tomers and business partners alike.

“We have always differentiated ourselves by having a complete tie-in between equipment, consumables and service, making us probably the only distribution company in Canada to do all three of those at a high level,” Crawford’s EPS (equipment, parts and services) director Jason Varga told Canadian Packaging during a recent visit to the Mississauga facility.

“This approach goes back many years ago,” Varga explains, “but eventually we ran into some challenges providing all these things from separate locations dedicated to either equipment, consumables or service.

“But since we opened up this new building, it quickly became our flagship location, where our clients and our equipment partners come to train, see live demos, test their products, and see cutting-edge automation equipment in action,” Varga relates.

“It’s been a real game-changer for us,” says Varga, comparing the site to a year-round live trade show exhibit of the broad range of packaging solutions distributed by Crawford Packaging throughout major Canadian markets.

“What we have essentially built is our own dynamic trade show experience whenever we need it, with the ability to invite our partners to collaborate in a one-of-a-kind facility without the inconveniences and hassles of traveling to a trade show or OEM facility,” Varga elaborates.

“It also serves as a demo center, whereby our clients can bring their products and run them on two, three or more different pieces of equipment to identify the best packaging solution for their needs,” says Varga.

“This way, they can see with their own eyes what the final packaging will look like coming off different machines,” Varga points out, “which is a pretty rare thing in the distribution business.”

In addition to representing several leading international

Crawford Packaging general sales manager Carey Berdock making a point about the Automation Experience Centre's training programs.

The touchscreen HMI (humanmachine interface) panel used to control Wulftec's innovative combination stretchwrapper/ strapper.

Ayer’s Cliff, Que., (part of the Duravant family of companies of Chicago) and plastic stretch film manufacturer Sigma Stretch Film Canada, a division of Sigma Plastics Group of companies operating in Belleville, Ont.

In late fall, Crawford Packaging hosted a comprehensive training session at its Automation Experience Center, bringing together partners Wulftec and Sigma for hands-on testing and demonstrations of optimized load containment solutions.

The collaborative initiative showcased Wulftec’s advanced automatic stretchwrapping technology, integrated with a strapping machine in a one-step, one-pass system, all operated via a single control cabinet and HMI (human-machine interface).

This set-up allowed synchronized operation of both machines in a compact, space-saving footprint. Through this process, Crawford’s team gained deeper insights into equipment and film performance, enabling the delivery of bestin-class, customized solutions.

This approach forms the foundation of Crawford’s corporate value proposition, embodied in its Wrap-It-Right pillar—a commitment to helping customers to “Do It Right.”

By combining industry-leading equipment and film with Crawford’s in-house technical expertise, the company ensures customers achieve measurable improvements including reduced waste, increased productivity, minimized damages, lowered material consumption, reduced labour requirements, and improved throughput.

The focus is not merely on selling

products; it’s about delivering customized, fully optimized solutions that perform in real-world operating environments.

As Crawford’s general sales manager Carey Berdock explains, this collaborative process with manufacturers provides a strategic advantage by enabling the team to gain first-hand insights through testing different films, running varied loads, and identifying process improvements.

“This approach strengthens Crawford’s ability to engineer industry-leading, fully optimized solutions that align with its mission to deliver the best possible outcomes for customers” says Berdock.

Cam Small, Crawford’s equipment sales manager, lauds the modularity of Wulftec’s machine design that allows for its stand-alone equipment to be merged into a holistic turnkey solution for effective load containment for palletized multilayered stacks of in-transit products.

“It can be custom-built by Wulftec to suit the end-user’s throughput requirements based on the weight of the loads, throughput velocity, containment capabilities, etc.,” Small says, “and the whole systems is scalable to go from 40 up to 140 loads per hour,” Small points out.

“It all depends on the required throughput and the type of loads that the customer needs to manage,” he explains, “which determines whether we use a rotary-arm stretchwrapper, a turntable model, a full- automatic or a semi-automatic machine.

“With Wulftec’s plug-and-play machines,

"Right now we are the only ones to manufacture both strapping and wrapping systems under the same roof, and controlling both the strapper and the stretchwrapper from the same control panel."

we can scale up or scale down the final load containment workcell to whatever configuration best meets the user’s needs, which Wulftec would then erect at their Quebec manufacturing facility and factory-test it for final user acceptance before delivery.”

While the robust system may not be for everyone, it can provide significant time and cost savings for high-speed production lines churning out large volumes of product on continuous basis.

“It is typically the very large, multishift operations that would derive the most benefit from such a fully automated system,” Small states.

Having worked at Wulftec for over 30 years, the company’s Canada sales rep Michel Rouleau says the company has been enjoying double-digit growth in the sales of its strapping systems since it started manufacturing them about eight years ago.

By providing a secondary level of load containment and stability for transported pallets, combining the two technologies can enable users to benefit from significant savings in the amount of stretch film they use per load, he explains, as well as being able to use lighter-gauge films.

“Right now we (Wulftec) are the only ones to manufacture both strapping and wrapping under the same roof, and controlling both the strapper and the stretchwrapper from the same control panel with just one user-friendly interface,” says Rouleau.

“This saves companies a lot of valuable floorspace and facilitates enabling a faster ROI (return-on-investment), because they don’t have to handle the same pallet twice.”

As Rouleau relates, Wulftec’s expertise in machine customization has enabled the company to grow its strapping business year over year, offering endusers a broad range of system accessories and value-added custom features that can handle a broad assortment of strapping materials in a wide range of thicknesses and size dimensions to handle all types of loads and stacking patterns.

Says Rouleau : “We can put two loads on top of each other and then wrap them and strap them together as one,or we can wrap/strap one from the bottom and

(Above)

The Sigma Stretch Film team comprised of (from left): Eric Tremblay, corporate account manager-Canada; Randy McMaster, southwestern Ontario sales manager; Bruce Cameron, director of sales for Canada and the Ag Division; Robert Young, packaging engineer.

another from the top separately, at the same time.

“We can also handle irregular-shaped and mixed loads that are not layered into a perfect cube,” Rouleau points out.

“As the supply chains keep getting leaner and just-in-time shipments be-

come more prevalent, customization of load containment machinery becomes an important factor in providing operational flexibility our customers need to ensure optimal load containment at the lowest cost per pallet,” Rouleau states.

This emphasis on cost reduction is

"Ensuring that the end-user is applying the right amount of film is the greenest solution out there."

also a major focus for Sigma Stretch Film Canada, leading Canadian manufacturer of stretch film whose business relationship with Crawford Packaging goes back at least 20 years, according to Sigma’s Canadian Director of sales Bruce Cameron.

“All of our films are designed and engineered to ensure that the right mix of resins go into that film, such that when they’re optimized on the right piece of automation, they deliver the containment solution that uses not too much and not too little film to contain the load, so that the load arrives at its point of destination in the ‘like new’ condition it was at the point of origin,” Cameron states.

“We are happy to work with Wulftec through our partnership with Crawford Packaging," Cameron says, “which built a unique value proposition around the marriage of our engineered film to Wulftec’s automation offerings, combined with the stellar installation and the after-sales support that Crawford provides in the marketplace.”

As Cameron points out, the lion’s share of film manufactured at the Belleville plant is sold into the Canadian marketplace, which he estimates at about 150 million pounds of film annually by volume.

“There are about 300 million pallets of all kinds of product moving throughout Canada each year,” he says, “with each pallet containing about a half pound of stretch film on average.

“So, it’s a big enough market to enable our Belleville facility to concentrate exclusively on industrial stretch film,”

states Cameron, adding that a large portion of the raw materials (resins) used to make the film is also sourced within Canada.

As Cameron relates, Sigma is making a concerted effort to enhance the circularity of its plastic film, having launched a new range of high-quality films with significant PCR (post-consumer recycled) content, “but the most important thing we can do is ensure that the end-users are using the right amount of film to contain their load,” he asserts.

“Out of the three Rs of recycle, reuse and reduce, reduction at the source is the most important thing,” he proclaims.

“Ensuring that the end-user is applying the right amount of film to contain their load through the supply chain is the greenest solution out there, period,” he states.

“Going forward, we were always looking at different avenues for thinner films, using different blends of resin to enhance the performance of existing films, and looking at different ways to improve on what we have been doing so far.

“That why we see value in the kind of training that Crawford facilitates for its teams—going beyond the rudimentary stuff and diving deeper into the science behind the resin blends that we make to create films that meets the needs of the marketplace,” Cameron concludes.

“We’re proud of what we do, we’re proud of the people we sell through, like Crawford, and we’re proud to help endusers with their unique containment solutions to ensure that their product gets through the supply chain in same condition as when it started its journey.”

The Automation Experience Centre stocks a large quantity of stretchwrap film rolls on-site to conduct extensive system test runs and evaluations.

This collaboration with industry leaders like Wulftec and Sigma underscores Crawford’s dedication to providing best-in-class solutions.

For companies looking to “Do It Right,” Crawford stands behind its work, ensuring that every packaging solution delivers measurable improvements across the supply chain.