Salt Lake City, Utah, US-based OC Tanner has invested in a Kongsberg PCS X24 Edge digital cutting table to bring custom packaging production in-house.
The company, a manufacturer of retail and corporate awards, had previously used third parties to handle packaging requests, placing bulk orders and making custom boxes and inserts by hand, ‘which was both time-consuming and inefficient,’ according to Daryl Lesser, a packaging engineer at the company.
‘We provide employee recognition services and awards to more than 3000 clients from various industries in more than 180 countries around the world, and many of our items require custom packaging,’ said Mr Lesser.
The machine installed is fitted with a MultiCut milling unit for milling, contour cutting, routing, drilling and engraving. A BevelKnife tool enables a 45-degree slanted cut for v-notching or single through cutting, while the corrugated crease tool creates crease lines without perforation. It will be possible to add new tools as required.
Mr Leiser continued, ‘As costs and lead times increased, we weighed this challenge with our own desire to have more control over the quality of our products and opted to create our own packaging department. Now, we are able to both make custom packaging and inserts as and when they are needed, while also giving our designers the ability to realise their ideas and make samples for new awards.
‘With such versatile options we are now able to cut paper, cork and plastic. Being able to customise our packaging has created significant cost savings, the ability to use more sustainable packaging, and as such we’ve enjoyed an increase in customer satisfaction. We’ve not only been using the table for making samples and custom boxes, but also as a production machine. Half of the working day consists of production runs and the other half of making samples and running test on new products.’
