Omnipack selects ARPRO to cut waste and improve quality

Czech automotive packaging specialist Omnipack is using ARPRO to produce up to 15,000 dunnage trays each year for the country’s thriving automotive industry. The new reusable trays, which are designed to protect a variety of parts in transportation from suppliers to vehicle assembly lines, are around seven times more cost-effective then the cardboard packaging previously used while offering significant environmental benefits.

Omnipack selected ARPRO from JSP in order to fulfil demanding materials requirements for the new reusable trays. The trays, which are up to 1400mm by 1000mm in size, but only 1kg in weight, travel between the supplier and its customer 50 times each year. The material used needed to be lightweight and easy to handle, yet robust enough to last for the full production life of a vehicle. To protect the parts in transportation it also needed to isolate them from vibration and prevent the ingress of moisture.

“The quality advantages of the new trays continue right to the production line” says Ing. Pavel ?idký of Skoda Auto. Unlike cardboard packaging, ARPRO dunnage trays are dust free in use, which minimises problems of part contamination during vehicle assembly.

In an industry increasingly concerned with its environmental performance, the reduced impact of the trays is also important. Over its five-year lifetime, each tray is expected to replace up 250 sets of non-reusable cardboard packaging, while their light weight helps to reduce fuel consumption on both the delivery and return journeys. At the end of their life, the trays are fully recyclable.

“Our automotive customers rely on us to provide packaging solutions that are functional, cost effective and environmentally friendly,” says Mr. Sedlacek, the owner and managing director of Omnipack. “The new ARPRO trays help us to fulfil all those criteria. Our customer is extremely pleased with their performance and we have had a lot of interest from other organisations in the automotive sector and beyond.”

“Reusable packaging is an increasingly important element in many supply chains,” says Paul Compton, JSP’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer - Europe. “For many of our customers, ARPRO provides a solution the other materials just can’t match.”

In order to provide dedicated packaging solutions for the automotive sector, Omnipack was formed in 2005 as a subsidiary of Czech plastics company Tanex Plasty. Now privately owned, Omnipack provides products to a number of Czech, Slovak and German automotive customers as well as other industries including chemicals, glass and food processing.