What is short-run packaging?

Here at Meridian for a long time we've been referring to ourselves as short-run specialists, but when we ask people what they think we mean by that we get such a range of answers that it might be worth being a little clearer!

Short run or "low-volume" means so many things to so any people. If you've got confectionery lines doing upwards of 1M units a year then 250,000 cartons might be low volume to you; but equally if you have a bumper year on one line and hit 10,000 units sold then you would consider 100-500 units "low" or "short".

To try to clear up what we mean, we've recently launched an introductory video, which explains a little bit about Meridian.

I'll expand on some of the key points touched on in the video, but it's certainly worth a watch (embedded file and link below):

• Short run to us means 50 cartons to 50,000 cartons
• We do have single runs of more than 50k cartons but in reality this is where we lose our competitive edge
• The word "cartons" really covers any box made from folding box board (FBB)
• We also offer transparent packaging made from either PVC and PET with the same short run specialism
• The reason that we're so competitive at these volumes is because our machines allow short set up times and The tooling costs less because we tend to run the jobs 1 to 4-up rather than our large competitors who might have large cutting formes and run up to 20-up
• This means we can manually strip as we run and employ skilled operators who quality check before, during and after the operation - in general our setters set and run the job meaning continuity of quality through the run
• We can operate to very short lead times allowing our customers to employ JIT ordering and hold much lower stock, which is useful when you want maximum selling space rather than giving over too much room for storage

If you want to discuss any of this either myself (Adam) or one of our sales team would be happy to talk to you about the advantages of being a specialist in short run packaging; and of course a specalist in confectionery (and chocolate) packaging...

http://meridiansp.co.uk/mspintro