WHEN Oliver Nudds, CEO of boat-building company, AquaQuad, grew dissatisfied with many of the rigid inflatables he was shipping to the United States arriving damaged, despite being packaged with copious quantities of bubble wrap, he found a solution just around the corner.
It came in the form of another Pinetown company, Dimple Paper, which manufactures and supplies a paper-based alternative to plastic protective packaging.
“Our core export market being the USA, we are very conscious of the need to deliver our products to market in the highest condition,” Nudds said. “However, we found that all the conventional methods of packaging our fiberglass and stainless steel products where less than suitable.
“Our experience was that bubble wrap left markings on the seats and other synthetic packaging materials left a residue on the fiberglass hulls and a similar film wrap used to protect our stainless steel products left behind distinctive marks and smears once removed.”
Nudds said damage rates using these conventional packaging products were unacceptably high, with seven percent receiving scratches and abrasions during the six-week shipping time.
“We changed our packaging to Dimple Paper as a direct result of these problems. We have now shipped and unpacked our fourth container to the US since utilizing Dimple Paper for our packaging and we have experienced no damage to our in-transit stock since the change.
“We have found that Dimple Paper is far more effective in protecting our products, is easier to use, and does not leave behind any residue or markings. And being paper, it’s healthier environmental connotations, have been noticed by our staff and clients.”
Dimple Paper owner Chris Digges said the product had been manufactured locally for some time but had never been aggressively marketed.
“Much of our business has been procured via word of mouth but extensive publicity on the negative effects of plastic and associated products has been the catalyst to offer the product more widely to those individuals and companies willing to lower their carbon footprint and who are prepared to make a difference,” he said.
Dimple Paper is a fully recyclable and biodegradable cushion packaging/wrapping product made of paper and sourced from an FSB (Forestry Stewardship Council) paper mill.
“The product offers packaging protection which is fully enviro-friendly. It is my understanding that there is no similar product apart from SFK, which is significantly heavier and therefore costlier, and bubble wrap and aerothene, that are plastic based,” Digges said.