logistics packaging

Holiday Logistics: The Long Journey of Christmas Gifts from Packaging to Packaging

As Christmas is getting nearer, your clients hurry up to buy gifts from your online store or brick-and-mortar premises. All these products will become treasured possessions once they are unwrapped on Christmas morning. Apart from the sentimental value, they also have an interesting story, one that even retailers would find impressive.

At Logistic Packaging, we know all about this story. Our job, after all, is to make sure that merchandize of all kinds is moved safely from place to place and arrives on your store shelves in good condition to be sold. Through our packaging products and logistics advice, we are proud to be part of this exciting journey and to help millions of people find and offer the perfect gift.

Let Us Start at the Very Beginning

Most of the global production of merchandize takes place in South-East Asia. This is the place of origin of the great majority of Christmas gifts, from high end smartphones to Barbie dolls. Once a product exits the production line, its next destination is the central warehouse of the manufacturer.

The newly manufactured products are placed in storage bins and carried on dollies to the warehouse. Here, the future gift waits inside a large rigid container for the moment when a packing order arrives. Order picking employees will place the product in foldable pallet containers or other space-saving plastic packages.

Thus, even before leaving the factory, the product has already exchanged 2 or 3 packaging materials. But the journey has only begun.

Away on Stormy Seas

Small foldable containers packed with products are usually placed on a plastic pallet, wrapped in stretch film and topped with a pallet lid for supplementary protection. Once this packing unit is ready, the Christmas gifts are ready to start their long journey.

The first stop is in the shipping harbor. Here, plastic containers and pallets are loaded into large metal shipping containers. Once the export formalities are completed, the containers are loaded into large sea freighters. The main leg of the journey begins.

Sea transportation is still the most cost efficient option in the global supply chain. However, even in the modern times, it is still a perilous journey. Heavy storms may cause water to reach inside the large metal container.

This is why sensitive products like food, electronics, pharmaceuticals, as well as valuable merchandize, are shipped in special containers, which offer them supplementary protection:

  • ESD packages for electronic products and instruments;
  • Containers with attached lid and safety locks;
  • Shipping totes with RFID seals to prevent tampering and theft;
  • Various internal dividers of textile dunnage and foam;
  • Thermoformed trays.

Arrival at the Destination

Once the ship docks in the destination harbor, the metal containers are unloaded and the products packed in plastic containers and on pallets are loaded into trailers. They arrive at another central warehouse, belonging to the retailer or distributor.

Here, the products are unloaded from the containers and placed in smaller shipping totes or crates. The space-saving containers are cleaned, folded down and sent back to be filled with another batch of products.

Once the products were transferred into smaller packages, such as Euro containers or bale arm containers, they are ready to reach the store shelves. However, the packaging journey is not over yet.

Packaging that Sells: the Art of Mixing Marketing with Product Safety

The role of the packaging materials used so far to store the products is to keep them safe and intact during the journey. Once the products are displayed in store, they need to be placed in packages that look attractive and draw attention to the product and its branding.

This is why packaging specialists like Logistic Packaging developed special ranges of see-through crates and display pallets. They are not suitable for transport and long term storage in the warehouse. However, they are sturdy enough to protect the products in the store, until they are purchased by your clients.

The journey is now over. The Christmas gift has exchanged around 5 different packaging materials, all designed and manufactured with one purpose in mind: to bring products safely from the distant country of manufacturing to your store.

At Logistic Packaging, we are committed to provide our clients with professional packaging materials, so that your products always arrive safe at their destination. No matter how complex your application may be, we are ready to offer an adequate solution. Send us an email or schedule a live Skype video chat with our packaging experts!