As a manufacturer or distributor of glass items, you understand the need for keeping your delicate, potentially dangerous, glass products secure. But what is the best way to achieve this?
Find out how to protect glass goods in transit and storage with our industry advice.
It’s not surprising there are strict rules governing the packaging of food for delivery with the UK or for export. Not only must your packaging provide enough information for hygienic and safe handling, it must also meet the basic standards for import and export.
While the Food Standards Agency can offer comprehensive information pertaining to the requirements of EC Regulation No 1935/2004, the following will give a brief overview of key food and drink packaging considerations.
The packaging of food and safety of food in transit is the primary consideration when looking at packaging types. Firstly, there’s transport or export packaging. This is the outermost layer of your packaging and its primary purpose is to protect food while it’s being transported.
Supply chain costs account for a significant proportion of the overheads for any company, and streamlining this process has the potential to yield substantial savings, depending on the size of the operation.
Because supply chain dynamics extend well beyond your own company’s activities, to get the maximum benefit it’s necessary to approach the task systematically. The best place of all to start is at home, with an enhanced understanding of your existing stock control procedures and a better grasp of your customers’ needs.
Here are some practical suggestions to get you started.
Packing and transporting furniture can be a complicated puzzle of maximising the amount of furniture that can be hauled within a given space while minimising the potential for damage.
The best way to move large pieces such as hardwood tables or soft sided chairs and sofas may be very different than the ideal way to transport antiques or small delicate items. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and much of what you’ll need to know is learned though on the job experience. However, following these tips can help you get your furniture moved with minimal risk and hopefully no damage.
With millions of pallets being shipped across the world at any point in time, a conflict of opinion has broken out between manufacturers, distributors, and environmental and food safety groups. While the PR agencies sharpen their pens, let’s take a balanced look at the advantages and disadvantages of wooden and plastic pallets.
Wooden pallets are considerably cheaper than plastic pallets at point of sale. There’s also the fact that one broken piece of wood can be easily replaced, reducing the cost and waste involved in disposing of an entire pallet and purchasing a new one.
However, where wood wins in the initial outlay, plastic wins in on-going expenses. Plastic pallets are roughly 30% lighter than wooden pallets, reducing shipping costs, and this may eventually add up to more savings for those who ship long distance. They also last longer.
Responsibly sourced wooden pallets can be made from recycled materials and sustainable forests and can be recycled into paper when their life is over.
Heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers in Britain must comply with stated rules and regulations to stay legal on the road. This information is compiled from multiple Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) sources and represents the latest HGV driver rules.
Your vehicle’s weight, where you drive, and the goods you are hauling all help determine the rules you’ll need to follow.
EU rules: If the maximum permissible weight of your HGV is over 3.5 tonnes and you are driving anywhere within the EU, including the UK, you are subject to EU regulations. This also applies to European Economic Area (EEA) countries and Switzerland.
GB domestic rules: If your vehicle’s weight is less than 3.5 tonnes or you meet one of the various exemptions to EU driving rules, you will be subject instead to Great Britain’s domestic driving regulations.
As an HGV driver, you must carefully track the hours you drive and stay within legal limits. The rules for hours you can drive depend on where you drive and the type of trip you are making.
The main objective when transporting furniture is for the product to arrive unscathed at its destination. Using a professional delivery firm goes a long way towards addressing this issue, but as a furniture supplier the ultimate responsibility for uneventful transit lies with you. It’s therefore a good idea to regularly review the options open to you for the protection of furniture during transportation.
It sounds incredibly boring, but it always pays to sit down and strategise before getting on with the nitty gritty of furniture transportation. Each piece has its own quirks, such as secret drawers or detachable handles, and these often require special protection. So pay particular attention to the materials you’ll need to pack the furniture, and make sure you have everything in place beforehand.
This seems like the ideal point at which to insert a few words of caution. In order to maximise your profit, you may be tempted to hire a man with a van to deliver your furniture. But please don’t, a lot can go wrong, and if you haven’t employed a reputable carrier there’s usually no comeback, so those attractively cheap and cheerful companies often represent a false economy.
At the planning stage (you didn’t skip this, did you?) you will have thought about the kinds of packing materials you might require to protect your furniture. Blankets, bubble wrap, plastic sheeting, corrugated cardboard and tape are the classic protective materials used in removals, so make sure you have plenty of these to hand.
Freight transport plays an important role in the UK economy, providing the distribution of goods necessary to a healthy quality of life and contributing thousands of jobs. Nearly 80 per cent of commercial transport in the UK is via heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), defined as vehicles weighing more than 3.5 gross tonnes.
This article focuses on HGV transportation, however high speed rail could be the future, click here to read more.
The amount of goods in terms of overall tonnage transported by heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) is on the rise. There was an 11 per cent increase from 2009-2010 alone, for a total of 139 billion tonne kilometres transported in that year period.
In addition to an overall increase in goods traffic, the average haul lengths for HGVs has also been increasing. Average trip length increased 17 per cent from 1990 to 2010, and is now calculated at 93 kilometres. The consolidation of manufacturing and warehousing facilities within the country plays an important part in the increase in haul lengths.
Maximum gross weight of HGVs has risen twice in the recent past, from 38 tonnes to 41 tonnes in 1999 and again from 41 tonnes to 44 tonnes in 2001. These regulation changes have increased the carrying capacity of an average HGV. This change has allowed the average load weight of an HGV haul to be increased by 15.3 per cent.
A series of studies in 2010 analysing transport efficiency, led by J. Allen and M. Brown, looked at measures of road freight transport intensity.
With the 6th largest economy in the world the United Kingdom relies on international trade. In 2013 the UK was the 4th largest importer and exporter in the world – clearly demonstrating that we rely on international trade for our country to thrive. But, we weren’t the first to start trading, in fact international trade can be traced back to Ancient History, and the process started with luxury goods.
Although it may seem unlikely, the story of trading starts with a camel – when Arabic nomads figured out how to domesticate them, camels soon went from being merely a mode of transport, to a key component of international trade with the movement of spices and silk from the far east.
