Città di Castello - In 2015 as part of a full review of its process automation, Active Ants reviewed the available solutions in the market to automatically wrap products ordered through its e-commerce clients online sites, into right size packaging. Active Ants has over 100 clients whose customers order products ranging from sports and work wear through to vitamins and nutritional products. The outcome of this review was to choose to partner with CMC and its market leading Cartonwrap. The three main key drivers in Active Ants decision were: 

Speed

The current manual process creates 30 packs per hour, whereas the CM Cartonwrap creates one every 3.6 seconds, meaning 1000 packs per hour. This is twice the speed of other equipment in the market

Right Size packaging

CMC Carton wrap has far greater flexibility in the range of sizes it can produce, and is the only machine that can produce packs small enough to be produced so they can fit through letterboxes saving significantly on delivery costs

Full colour printing onto the pack –Packvertising

CMC cartonwrap is the first machine to use full colour variable printing onto the variably sized pack allowing Active Ants to eliminate all client specific stock and use a single corrugated for all their brands. It also allows their clients to message onto the pack allowing 1-2-1 marketing on each pack as it is dispatched. Active Ants will be the first EU customer using this technology.

Integration

The CMC Cartonwrap full integrates into the automation workflow, from item pick into the tote, automated tote delivery, to label production and dispatch

CMC Cartonwrap will bring many benefits to  Active Ants in terms of cost savings and improved customer’s experience.

• Reduced Labour: single operator to produce 1000 packs per hour
• Reduced Packaging costs: no more brand specific stocks; no fillers due to right size packaging
• Reduced Dispatch cost: reduced due to right size packaging of Cartonwrap especially for small packs allowing mailing costs
• Reduced Carbon Footprint: small packs being dispatched with less corrugated
• Increased: speed to market allowing potential later cut offs for next day delivery
• Flexibility: full colour printing means new clients can be on boarded with minimal cost.

Jeroen Dekker, Active Ants MD commented : "The significant improvement in our capacity while substantially reducing our labour cost are a huge benefit to the business. When you combine this with the ability to change every pack in full colour for our clients, this is a real market differentiator “

“ Active Ants will be the European Pioneers of our Packvertizing technology.  The combination of such a unique feature with their unrivalled creativity will help retailers to enhance their branding and bring customer experience to the next level with Augmented Reality messaging” says Marco Mozzaorecchi,. CMC Area Manager.

Launched in 2013, CMC CartonWrap is now being installed in the largest e-commerce fulfillment and delivery sites worldwide as well as Print On Demand and Photobook companies.