Tim Ansell
SALES DIRECTOR, AL THIKA PACKAGING
Al Thika and its partner Hexcelwrap presented Curby Mailers, an easy-to-use paper-based structure that exceeds the protection rates of traditional fragile wraps. The cushioning material replaces bubble wrap and offers substantial benefits over traditional wrapping mxroviding a significant return on investment for end-users, including damage reductions, pack time efficiencies and fewer materials to process an order.
My company is just 33 people, and we probably received four or five deliveries from one or another eCommerce company during the week. So, if you multiply that by every company across the UAE, it’s millions and millions of boxes, envelopes and courier packs. Althika has traditionally been involved in the supply of packaging machinery. About four or five years ago, we could see the way things were going in terms of eCommerce. And so, we have connected with and are now the exclusive distributor for a company called IPG, which manufactures machines, materials and products for the eCommerce industry.
So, we specifically moved into that area several years ago. Removing Curby Mailer is very simple – it’s a brown envelope. I’m sorry, I can’t make it look any more exciting than it is, but it is a courier envelope which does away with the bubble-bursting fun of bubble wrap. Inside the mailer is not two sheets of polyethene with expanded bubbles, it is simply a hexagonal hive assembly of paper. It is a single sheet of paper on each side which expands and creates the hexagonal padding.
It’s 100% recyclable. It is purely paper. There is no plastic. There is no separation process. There is no need for the recycling centre to take the envelope and tear it open, rip out the plastic, and then recycle them separately. It’s one process. It goes straight into the paper recycling system and it stays there and it’s done. It’s really that simple. It’s a patented production process currently manufactured in the US, but they are expanding their production, so we’ll be making it in Europe shortly.
In addition to the mailers themselves, we have water-activated tape, which is often used to close carbon boxes for eCommerce shipping. That replaces BOPP tape. BOPP has a number of disadvantages that can be removed. If you put a hair dryer on it and you heat it up, you can actually soften the tape and remove it without showing any indication it’s been removed. So, it’s not very secure. And it also means that once you’ve got the plastic on the cardboard box, again, you can’t recycle it simply as a paper package. Clearly, it’s a paper product. It can be printed, whatever you need on there. It’s widely used by certain eCommerce companies in the US and Europe. We can add in pending logos, barcodes, QR codes, and recycle logos to encourage people to do so, plus address boxes and return addresses, whatever you want. It really is that simple. It’s no fun at all because it doesn’t pop, but there we are.
I’ll also mention another paper-only product for the eCommerce sector and for food distribution. This is the paper insulation for boxes per inch. It’s got a greater insulation coefficient than expanded polystyrene. These are, quite simply, sheets of foam-padded paper, which fold up, go into the box and give you extremely good insulation for the two, four, six, or eight hours it might take for your trucks to make deliveries. It’s made completely from post-industrial, pre-consumer paper and corrugated material; completely recycled paper that is manufactured in various ranges and sizes. If you are using Theromocol boxes for shipping, you can use this instead and you are no longer consuming plastics. Gold chain, meal delivery and pharmaceuticals are the target markets.