How a Packaging Plant Cut Floor Space 25% and Sped Up 50%
The challenge: new digital presses, same old floor
Heritage Solutions, a leading packaging and printing company in the global Flexpipe network, invested in HP digital presses to move from analogue to digital printing. The new equipment demanded a completely rethought floor workflow — material had to reach the presses and leave them without the buffer piles and double-handling the old layout relied on.
The solution: custom-built gravity racks
On the recommendation of a lean consulting firm, Heritage custom-built gravity flow racks from the Flexpipe tube and joint system to feed and unload the presses. Because the racks were assembled from modular components rather than welded, the team could size every lane to the exact carton and sheet formats they run — and re-size them when formats change.
- Gravity-fed lanes deliver stock to the press at the point of use
- FIFO flow eliminates buffer piles and forklift traffic at the press
- Racks rebuilt in-house as product formats evolve
The results
- Used floor space reduced by 25%
- Operation 50% faster with the new press-feeding layout
- A repeatable methodology for any plant moving from analogue to digital production
What this means for your Australian plant
Floor space is among the most expensive assets in Australian manufacturing — and the fastest thing to run out of when new equipment arrives. Purpose-designed flow racks routinely recover 20–30% of floor area compared with static shelving and pallet staging. Flexpipe Australia designs these systems around your equipment footprint and carton formats, and ships the kitted components anywhere in Australia.
Fitting new equipment into an existing floor?
Send us your floor plan — we'll design the material flow around it.