With global leadership positions in flexible and rigid plastics packaging, Amcor continually innovates to find new and better ways to protect essential products such as food, beverage, pharmaceutical, medical, home and personal care. Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, Amcor employs over 29,000 people worldwide and has operations across 43 countries.
Amcor Flexibles Asia Pacific has more than 40 sites in 8 countries. Amcor Flexibles China has 11 manufacturing sites throughout China located in Huizhou, Zhongshan, Foshan, Jiangmen, Jiangyin, Chengdu and Beijing City.
Challenges
Excellent quality is always the mission of Amcor.
The Jiangyin Shenlong Site of Amcor Flexibles China has a complete quality control system to guarantee the quality and performance of its products so that customers receive the highest quality consistent materials. A lot of international companies such as Nestle, Mondelēz, Dupont and Unilever have a long-term business relationship with Shenlong and select high quality packaging products supplied by them.
In the early years of business development, due to order volume all the tests of packaging materials were completed in another manufacturing site of Amcor. With the expansion of business and introduction of more product lines, the testing efficiency of sending samples to another manufacturing site was not able to meet the actual demand. It became the biggest concern of the quality control department and sometimes even affected the production schedule. The company did not have its own laboratory and testing instruments and in time that became a big problem for the company. Mr. Gao, manager of the equipment department said: “It has become unwise to test the packaging materials in another laboratory rather than our own laboratory especially when that laboratory is used to test another company’s samples. The testing efficiency cannot be guaranteed because the testing process is out of our own control”. Mr. Gao is right. A fast feedback on test results can help manufacturers find the defects with their products, with the potential to affect their customers. Testing in-house can help manufacturers figure out problems with their production processing and minimize the loss caused by those problems.
“By establishing our own packaging testing laboratory, our quality control capability is also improved. Back to the early stage of development, sometimes our customers sent professional inspection organizations to our company to examine the manufacturing conditions and quality control of products. Now we have our own packaging testing laboratory and very strict quality inspection rules. Our customers will have more confidence in our products and our company”, Mr. Gao said.
Solutions
When they decided to establish their own laboratory, the instrument purchasing department of Shenlong undertook a comprehensive survey and research on the main packaging testing instrument manufacturers both in China and abroad. After studying the history, background, products and technical strength of all those manufacturers, Shenlong selected Labthink Instruments Co. Ltd as its supplier of packaging mechanical property testing instruments.
In one year, a packaging testing laboratory for oxygen barrier property, moisture barrier property, heatsealability, coefficient of friction, and optic transmittance testing was established by Shenlong. This laboratory was equipped with Labthink OX2/230 Oxygen Transmission Rate Test System, VAC-VBS Gas Permeability Tester, W3/060 Water Vapor Transmission Rate Tester, XLW(M) Auto Tensile Tester, HST-H3 Heat Seal Tester and MXD-02 Coefficient of Friction Tester, etc. Following the instructions of Labthink after-sales engineers, this laboratory was officially put into use. A laboratory staff member said: “When we have our own laboratory, we have more time spent on verification tests to solve any problems with packaging processing. For example, the biggest trouble we faced in the past is that our customers are not satisfied with the heat seal strength of our flexible packaging bags. Sometimes the seals were insufficient and sometimes excessive. But now we use the heat seal tester and tensile tester to determine the sealing parameters and test seal strength repeatedly so that we can achieve the optimal sealing parameters to ensure the proper heat sealing strength. We will never again be concerned about such problems”.
Results
Today, a large quantity of packaging materials that pass the inspection in laboratories are transported to food, drug and many other manufacturers, where they will be used in packaging of food, beverage, medical products, and healthcare products, etc. In a long-term use, Labthink testing instruments are well received by customers for the stability of the test data. Mr. Gao told us, “We never face serious problems with Labthink instruments. They are very reliable Amcor headquarter in Shanghai is using instruments imported from other countries. But I don’t see much difference between the results. Actually, Labthink instruments are more cost-effective. What’s more, Labthink provides timely after-sales service. I always recommend Labthink testing instruments to our customers. If we and our customers use the same instrument, our results should correlate well and it makes troubleshooting problems easier and more efficient.
Today, Labthink continues to provide customers with high quality packaging testing instruments as well as comprehensive and timely after-sales services. Labthink also provides customers with full technical support for their special testing and customization requirements.
Labthink, the ultimate testing technology!