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.

The season, and buying for a peak you cannot move

Footwear ships to a retail date. The peak is short, it is not negotiable, and capacity bought for it stands idle for the rest of the year.

Two simpler machines usually beat one fast one here. They absorb the peak together, they survive a breakdown during it, and outside the season one of them can be switched off without stopping anything. A single fast machine does none of that and usually costs more.

The other half of a peak is people. Temporary hands seal cartons to a temporary standard, which is exactly the case where a machine that removes an operator decision earns its place — not because it is faster, but because it is the same every time.

Tell us the peak week's volume rather than the annual figure. It is the number the machine has to survive.

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.

Buying from Faridabad

Agra is a short road run from the works. The machine leaves run-tested; prices are ex works with GST and freight shown separately, and the freight line on this route is small.

Many buyers here send their own vehicle. Tell us when it is coming and the machine will be packed and ready.

For a seasonal business, buy the wear parts with the machine rather than during the peak. The heating element on a strapper and the blades on a sealer are inexpensive, and the week you need them is the week you cannot wait for them.