Packaging machines for Waluj MIDC

Components: dense boxes and long journeys

A two-wheeler or auto component leaving Waluj is usually going a long way — to Pune, to Chennai, or for export — and it spends days in a trailer rather than hours.

That is a different problem from a short haul. A carton that would be fine across a city works loose over three days of vibration, and the failure appears as a burst bottom seam at the far end where nobody can say when it happened.

Two straps and an even machine seal are what survive that, and the strap specification should be chosen against the journey rather than the weight alone. Tell us both when you ask.

Where the parts are palletised, the pallet is strapped to its load as well as wrapped. Film holds a load together; it does not hold a load down over three days.

Pharmaceutical formulations, and being clear about who makes what

Waluj's formulation units work to a documented process, and their auditors ask precise questions. The most useful thing this page can do is answer one of them in advance.

Filling machines, capping and can sealing, labelling, vacuum and shrink packaging are Fulcrum catalogue models — supplied, installed and serviced by Fulcrum Infratech Pvt. Ltd. They are not built at our Faridabad works. The strapping, carton sealing, stretch wrapping and material handling machines are the ones that are.

Knowing which is which before an audit is a great deal easier than establishing it during one, and we would rather draw that line ourselves than have it drawn for us.

On any requirement your standard sets — a material of contact, a certification, a guarding detail — ask with the enquiry and the answer comes back against the standard. We will not claim a certification we do not hold.

Beverage and brewery: weight, glass and condensation

A brewery's outer pack carries glass and it carries water, which is a combination that punishes cartons.

Board loses strength as it takes up moisture, and a chilled pack brought into a warm loading bay wets its own carton from the inside out. A shipper that was rated for the weight when dry is not rated for it an hour later.

That is a strapping case rather than a stronger-carton case. Two straps at moderate tension hold a softened shipper's shape where tape alone will not, and the tension has to be moderate — a damp carton cuts at the edge under a tight strap.

For the palletised load, wrapping traps that moisture rather than excluding it. If pallets are being wrapped straight out of a chilled area, they want to equalise first, and that is a layout decision rather than a machine one.

One estate, two answers

The practical consequence of Waluj's mix is that a supplier who gives you one answer for the whole estate is not paying attention.

What we would ask first is not what you make but what happens to the pack after it leaves you: how far, how long, whether it is chilled, whether it is opened by a machine operator or by a distributor. Those four answers decide more than the product does.

Send them with the enquiry along with a photograph of the pack as it leaves today. A photograph of the current pack tells us more than a description of the ideal one.

Buying when the plant runs three shifts

Most of Waluj runs around the clock, and a machine bought for a single-shift plant wears three times as fast in a three-shift one.

That changes the arithmetic on wear parts more than on the machine. A heating element rated for a year of single-shift work is a four-month part on three shifts, and a plant that has not planned for that discovers it at three in the morning. Buy the spares with the machine, not after it.

It also changes who has to be trained. On one shift the person who was there at commissioning knows the settings; on three, two of the shifts were asleep. Ask for the settings to be written down and left with the machine — we would rather do that than return to reset something that was changed by somebody who never saw it set.

For the same reason, keep a written record of the tension or force setting at the machine itself. It costs nothing and it prevents the slow drift that turns into a quality complaint six weeks later.