Packaging machines for Agra footwear

A carton inside a carton

Every pair goes into its own box, and boxes go into a shipper. Those are two different packing operations with two different standards, and confusing them is where money goes.

The inner box is the product's face. It is printed, the buyer designed it, and nothing may mark it. No strap, no tape across a face, and a shipper that does not rub it. That is a shipper-fit question rather than a machine question.

The shipper carries the weight and takes the stacking, and that is where a machine seal earns its place. An even seal is what lets a shipper stack; a hand-dragged one is where a stack starts to lean.

Straps go on the shipper, never on the inner box.

Eleven sizes, and what that does to a sealer

A footwear run is not one carton. Sizes change the inner box, and an assorted shipper changes with the size ratio the order carries.

The question is whether your shipper changes, not whether your inner box does. Many Agra units run several inner sizes inside two or three shipper sizes, and that is the good case: a fixed-size semi automatic sealer handles it, run in batches by shipper size rather than by style.

Where the shipper genuinely varies through the day, hand taping plus strapping usually beats a sealer you re-set all day — and where the volume is high enough, a random-size machine measures each one itself.

Send us a week of your actual shipper sizes rather than your style list. That is the list that decides it.

Small units, small floors

A great many Agra units work on a floor with no room for anything that turns. That rules out a turntable wrapper and rules in a bench.

A low table top strapping machine sits at working height on a table you already have. Movement is trolleys rather than pallets, and the right trolley is the one that turns in your corridor rather than the one with the highest capacity.

Measure the narrowest point on the route before ordering anything, and send that measurement with the enquiry along with the electrical point you have. Those two answers prevent most of the problems that appear on delivery day.

Courier parcels and the single-pair despatch

A growing share of Agra's output now leaves one or two pairs at a time, to a marketplace warehouse or straight to a customer, and that despatch has almost nothing in common with a wholesale consignment.

The pack is small, the volume of packs is high, and the handling is rougher than any truck load. The shoe box itself is not a shipper and must not travel as one - it arrives scuffed, and a scuffed box is a return even when the shoes are perfect.

For this work the useful equipment is small: a tape dispenser and a bench, or a compact carton sealer once the outer size has been standardised down to two or three. Standardising the outer is what makes the machine possible, and it is worth doing for the freight saving alone.

We would rather sell you nothing here than a semi automatic sealer that stands idle because every parcel is a different size.