Many logistics companies consider product damage a regular occurrence, and they often take it as a part of their everyday operations. As a result, such damages often lead to losses that may not make much difference when accounted for individually. However, when the traders calculate the net losses due to product damage, they realize that they are pretty significant.
MYXfitness, one of the top fitness equipment suppliers, also revealed that they have to incur extra costs to prevent product damage during shipping. Considering all the factors, the Food Industry Association released loss data solely for the grocery industry, which amounted to $20 billion per year! The primary contributors to the losses were collision damage, unfavorable temperature, lost container, theft, and undesired humidity levels.
Therefore, it becomes crucial for carton box importers and exporters to take the necessary steps to prevent cargo damage and minimize the resulting losses. There can be multiple approaches to protect goods from damage, and here is a five-step guide to protecting your goods from damage:
5 Steps That Every Carton Box Importers Should Follow To Prevent Damage
- Ensuring Damage-Free Container Transportation
Most carton box buyers insist on those shippers who purchase their carrier liability insurance beforehand. However, the onus to protect the containers from external damages lies primarily on the shoulders of the shipper. Also, carrier liability insurance doesn’t provide immunity against strict laws, general regulations, and conventions.
One can also not assume that accidents will never happen, so the shipper and consignee must have a plan ready to collect the evidence for the same to furnish proof to the insurer. Shippers can also use shock detectors and tip indicators for this purpose.
Such indicators can help detect potential damages and report them in case of an accident. These reports can be further used for making insurance claims.
- Right Packaging Strategy
Packaging has a lot to do with the safety of goods and their effective shipping through the world’s water bodies. Some carton box importers indeed rely on the traditional methods, but looking at the evolving packaging methods, they need to catch up sooner.
A running trend is to stack the pallets, but cardboard boxes are made of corrugated paper, and they cannot bear much weight. Therefore, there’s always a limit depicted for the stacking of pallets. A shipping company learned the same lesson but in a way more expensive manner.
They switched to a new packaging material that could bear only one pallet, and they started sending the packages in dual-stack layers. However, before they could realize that the new arrangement was taking a lot more space, they had already lost thousands of dollars!
- Stacking Is The Key
Stacking is an integral part of transportation, and it is a regular practice to arrange the stacks based on the strength of packing material. Both the carton box buyers and the exporters use stacking to store and ship their goods. You must keep the following points regarding stacking in mind to ensure the safety of the shipments:
- Support each box with more than one box at the bottom.
- Never hang the product over the edge of the pallet as it leads to a drop in strength by over 32%.
- The equal distribution of weights is a traditional and healthy practice. It follows a simple rule; the lightest ones go on the top.
- Fixing the products is equally important, and edge boards could be used for the same.
- Finally, using stretch films and straps to fix on the pallet finishes the stacking and packaging job.
- Appropriate Labelling
When an item is packed and shipped in transit, the handlers know about its contents only through labeling. The appropriate way to label a package is by depicting its contents, weight, material, cautions, and a clear indication of it being fragile if items are made of glass or other breakable materials.
Although labeling is a regular and mandatory procedure, taking extra care while ensuring the proper handling of your goods while in transit has an overall benefit.
- Loading And Unloading
As per an independent study on all the transportation-related damages incurred by MYXfitness, most accidents happen while loading and unloading the goods and not while they are in transit.
Some of the parameters to consider during this procedure are suitable transportation equipment, trained staff, disaster mitigation equipment like fire extinguishers, etc.
Packing It The Right Way
Regularly working on improving packaging-related losses involves using advanced analytics while making critical decisions like choosing the suitable packaging material. There is sufficient statistical data to support the fact that improper packaging causes substantial damage to the business and affects the overall reputation in the long run.
Do you want to stand out on the parameter of safety when it comes to goods transit? Follow the five simple steps discussed above, and you are all set to complete your shipments without any damage to your products or even their packaging!