Laminations flexible roll edge protection safeguards rolls of expensive, customized paper
Located in Menasha in the heart of Wisconsin’s Paper Valley, the George A. Whiting Paper Co. is a small operation with a large and long-standing reputation for excellence.
Whiting Paper occupies a niche that is built on a 125-year history of delivering high-quality specialty papers to its printing and converting customers.
“Everything we make is high-end custom paper,” said Ray Tews, finishing supervisor at Whiting Paper—one of the few independently owned paper companies still operating in the U.S. The company specializes in short runs of made-to-order paper for scrapbooking, printing and photo mat boards.
Whether the order is for cover-weight or text-weight, plain or embossed, designer colors or white, Whiting Paper prides itself in delivering pristine product that is 100-percent usable.
“If there’s any damage on the rolls when it gets to the customers, they get very concerned,” said Tews. “It’s very valuable paper and they don’t want to lose one or two rounds off the roll because of tears or nicks. It’s important to them, and to us, that they get what they’re paying for.”
So how does Whiting Paper protect expensive paper rolls that often will be handled and moved as many as four times before they are shipped by truck and then handled multiple times again by customers across the country?
The company uses Laminations’ new FlexRoll® product with stretch wrap.
“Roll edge protection like we get with FlexRoll means we seldom have a claim of damage on our rolls,” said Tews.
FlexRoll was developed by Laminations as a cost-effective, lightweight product for keeping the edges of rolled products clean and free from abrasions, rips, wrinkles and smudges. With evenly spaced notches that enable its triangular fingers to bend quickly and easily around the edges of rolled and contoured products, FlexRoll acts as barrier against damage during shipping, storage and handling.
Ideal for producers and converters of paper and other roll stock materials where lighter-weight protection is appropriate, FlexRoll—available in calipers of 0.04 and 0.05 inches—acts as a buffer that separates product from the walls and floors of trucks and warehouses. It also creates a barrier between the edges of stacked rolls.
Tews has been using other Laminations edge protection products such as VBoard® for years. He recently switched to the new FlexRoll product from a roll edge protection product made by a competitor. It’s a switch he’s glad he made for several reasons.
While the product pricing is comparable, Laminations has an edge over the other roll edge protection vendor because of freight, Tews said. Laminations central plant is located just minutes away in Appleton while the competitor is located on the East Coast.
Freight costs aside, Laminations’ FlexRoll has an even bigger advantage over the competition when it comes to material handling logistics.
“Unlike the competition’s product, which come in large boxes of five rolls each, FlexRoll boxes contain only two rolls,” Tews said. “That makes the boxes light enough for one man to handle them. The other boxes took two men to move around.”
Storage and maneuvering space are at a premium at Whiting Paper.
“We have to store things in the proper area to make space, save time and minimize the transporting of the product and supplies within the plant,” Tews said. “FlexRoll is delivered on pallets that have 12 boxes, which makes it easy for us to store those boxes right where we need them for application when we put the stretch wrap on our rolls.”
A final point that tipped the scale in favor of FlexRoll is customer service.
“We’ve formed a really good relationship with Laminations over the years,” said Tews, a longtime user of Laminations VBoard® on pallets of sheeted paper stock. “They’ll help you out any way they can. All you have to do is make a phone call.”
The combination of quality products, fair pricing and superior service has earned Laminations a loyal customer in Whiting Paper.
“They’re just good people to work with,” Tews said. “I would recommend them highly to anyone.”
