“We needed to triple capacity without tripling our footprint,” says Liam Patel, Production Manager at PackRight Swindon. “Corrugated jobs were stacking up, and changeovers were taking longer than our customers would tolerate. Flexo was our backbone, but the way we were running it wasn’t keeping pace.”
Based on insights from ecoenclose‘s work with recycled liners and water-based systems, the team explored a hybrid path: Flexographic Printing for base graphics on Corrugated Board, and inline Inkjet Printing for QR and batch-specific messaging. It sounded simple, but we all knew the devil would live in color control and setup.
PackRight serves retailers and tenants who ask practical questions—like where can you get free boxes for moving? For local shipments—especially moving boxes swindon—the team wanted to print reuse guidance and community callouts directly on cartons, without slowing the line to a crawl.
Company Overview and History
PackRight Swindon is a mid-sized corrugated converter serving retail and e-commerce brands across the UK. Weekly volume ranges from 25–35 SKUs, mostly Folding Carton inserts and Box formats, with sizes swinging from small retail packs to large shipper cartons. Most work runs on recycled Corrugated Board paired with FSC-certified liners and Water-based Ink to meet sustainability expectations without upsetting cost targets.
The plant’s core is a 6-color Flexographic Printing line with in-line Die-Cutting and Gluing. In 2024, they added a compact DOD Inkjet Printing head to apply GS1-compliant QR and batch codes, plus short-run promotions. The mix is Short-Run, Seasonal, and On-Demand work, so setup discipline and FPY% matter as much as top-line speed.
The business is pragmatic—e-commerce shippers want consistent branding, clean registration, and durable cartons that survive the chain. Retail partners care about shelf-ready packs that read correctly at a glance. Hybrid Printing promised versatility, but only if the workflow could be tamed and the operators kept confident when jobs change hour by hour.
Quality and Consistency Issues
“Our color drift and setup time were hurting us,” Liam admits. Baseline ΔE was floating in the 2.5–4 range across some SKUs, and First Pass Yield sat around 78–82% depending on substrate lots. Scrap hovered at 6–8%, mostly from registration misses and ink laydown inconsistencies on rougher boards. Changeovers commonly took 22–25 minutes, leaving crews chasing the schedule rather than leading it.
The root causes weren’t glamorous. Water-based Ink pH wandered over longer runs, and anilox selection was a compromise between dense graphics and coverage on recycled flutes. Adhesive warp at the Gluing station added an extra checkpoint. The inspection team logged 1,200–1,500 ppm defects on busy weeks. “We weren’t proud of that,” Liam says, “but you can’t fix what you don’t measure.”
There was also a perception gap—customers wanted variable messaging (QRs, promos, reuse notes), yet waiting for a separate label run blew up lead time promises. Inline variable data sounded like a silver bullet, but everyone knew it can drag throughput unless the process is tuned and the roles are clear.
Solution Design and Configuration
The team set a practical spec: Flexographic Printing for base graphics with Water-based Ink on Corrugated Board; target ΔE ≤ 2 on brand colors; and a standard anilox map by graphic density. A simple pH control routine (hourly checks, buffered adjustments) brought ink drift under control. Registration checks tied to a G7-inspired color workflow tightened alignment without overcomplicating daily routines.
Inline Inkjet Printing handled GS1/ISO/IEC 18004 (QR) and DataMatrix. Resolution was dialed to 300–600 dpi depending on the code area, balancing readability and line speed. Marketing tested short-run promotions pointing to ecoenclose promo code and ecoenclose coupon code landing pages—printed only on selected batches to avoid bogging the line every hour. Die-Cutting and Gluing stayed in sequence, with QA using a simple scan-and-record station to capture code readability rates.
Here’s where it gets interesting: sustainability messaging like moving boxes reusable was added near the QR, nudging consumers toward local reuse hubs. The catch? Variable zones slowed the conveyor by about 5–8% on those jobs. The team limited heavy variable runs to Short-Run and Promotional batches, keeping High-Volume work on steady graphics. “There’s always a trade-off,” Liam notes. “We chose predictability for big runs and flexibility for messages that matter.”
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Color accuracy tightened: ΔE across controlled SKUs sits around 1.4–1.8. First Pass Yield now lands in the 88–93% band for standard corrugated sets. Scrap shifted from 6–8% into the 3–4% range on tuned recipes. The defect rate moved to roughly 650–800 ppm on the same product mix. “We’re not perfect,” Liam says, “but the floor feels stable, and the crews aren’t fighting the press.”
Setup is leaner: changeovers moved from 22–25 minutes to about 13–16 minutes on repeat SKUs, helped by standardized ink checks and preflight files. Throughput measured as packs per hour rose in the single digits—typically 8–12% depending on graphics density. Energy per pack shifted from ~0.24 kWh to ~0.22–0.23 kWh, and the team estimates CO₂/pack in the 42–50 g range versus a prior 45–55 g estimate. The payback period for the hybrid configuration is tracking at roughly 14–18 months.
On the customer side, QR campaigns pulled modest engagement—scan-through around 3–5% on selected retail shipments, higher on local moving boxes swindon orders that linked to reuse programs and answers to “where can you get free boxes for moving.” Not every code hit the mark, and some weeks were quiet. “Still worth it,” Liam says. “It connected the carton to a real action.” Fast forward six months, the hybrid line—with guidance influenced by ecoenclose—is the plant’s steady workhorse for corrugated jobs.
