Packaging machines for Tiruppur knitwear

Cube, and the money in it

Air freight is charged on whichever is greater, actual weight or volumetric weight, and knitwear loses that comparison every single time. Sea freight charges by the container, which is the same argument in a different currency: fewer cartons in the box is fewer boxes in the container.

The saving is made before the carton, not in it. Garments bagged and then bundled under moderate, repeatable pressure occupy measurably less space than the same garments laid in loose, and that difference runs straight to the freight bill on every shipment of that style.

It is worth measuring rather than arguing about. Pack ten cartons the way you do now and ten with the bundles compressed and strapped, and compare the cube. An afternoon settles a question that otherwise runs for years, and the number belongs to you rather than to a supplier's brochure.

The machine that does the compressing is a strapper, not a sealer. Tension has to repeat, which is exactly what a machine gives you over a hand tool.

The polybag, and the sealer that suits it

Everything leaving a Tiruppur unit is bagged before it is boxed, usually to a buyer's film thickness and bag size.

The sealer is chosen by the widest bag you use, not by the garment. Seal quality is heat and dwell time set against your film — a setting rather than a property of the machine, and one worth setting against your own bags at commissioning rather than accepting a default.

A weak seal on a knitwear bag fails in a way nobody sees until inspection. The bag does not burst; it opens along an inch of the seal, the garment picks up dirt at that point, and the inspector finds it. If you have soiled-garment rejections that nobody can explain, look at the seal before you look at the floor.

Working to a buyer's carton specification

Most Tiruppur buyers issue a specification covering carton dimensions, board grade, tape width, label position, and often how many straps and where they go.

Send it with the enquiry. It answers most of what we would otherwise have to ask, and it is the difference between a machine specified against your actual work and one specified against a description.

Where the specification asks for something that will damage the carton — a strap position that cuts the edge on the board grade named — we will say so before you buy. That comes up more often with strap position than with anything else, and edge protectors solve most of it for very little.

Sampling, and the trap in it

The pattern here is consistent enough to be worth naming. The sample is packed by hand, carefully, by somebody senior. It is approved. Production then packs the same style at forty times the rate with a different person on each shift, and it does not look the same.

Pack the sample the way production will actually pack it. If the run will be machine-sealed and strapped, seal and strap the sample and record the tension. An approved sample that production cannot reproduce is a trap you built yourself.

This is also the cheapest moment to find out whether the specification is achievable at all — before the order, not after the first shipment.

Buying from the other end of the country

Faridabad to Tiruppur is the long haul, and the freight line on the quotation shows it honestly. Prices are ex works, with GST and freight quoted separately so you can see what the machine costs and what getting it to you costs.

What makes the distance manageable is a short list of parts on your own shelf: on a strapping machine the heating element and the strap guides, on a bag sealer the element and the PTFE tape. None is expensive and all of them stop a bench.

For a fault, call. Most problems on these machines are settled on the phone with the machine in front of you, and at this distance that is far quicker than anything else.