Economic Challenges Result In Greener Sprint® Iron Chelates Lineup
For Becker Underwood’s Turf & Ornamental Products Group
Ames, Iowa – August 25, 2008 – The challenge of rising costs for product ingredients, packaging materials and transportation has resulted in a greener, energy-saving lineup of Sprint® iron chelate products from Becker Underwood, company officials have announced.
“Over the past several months, our suppliers had delivered regular notices of significant price increases for raw ingredients and packaging materials, including those specifically used to produce and package our Sprint products,” explains Joe Lara, product manager for the company’s turf and ornamental products. “Transportation costs have continued to rise as well.
“Since we were unwilling to sacrifice the premium performance qualities of our Sprint products, we knew we needed to identify alternative solutions for managing the cost increases. Fortunately, we rather quickly identified several opportunities to stem rising manufacturing and transportation costs. And to make it even better, these are greener, more environmentally-friendly processes and procedures.”
Sprint 330 Products First To Receive New Packaging
Packaging for the Sprint 330 and Sprint 330+Mn 50-pound products has been a bulk-size fiberboard barrel with heavy reinforcing metal rings. New packaging now will be a durable but lighter weight, double-walled, recyclable corrugated cardboard box. The new container is designed with helpful perforated lift slots on the sides of the box to improve user handling, a feature previously absent on the fiberboard barrel. The change has reduced product packaging weight by more than 75% and lowered same-quantity shipped weights by nearly 9.5%. Reduced packaging weight means lower shipping costs per packaged unit of product, Lara notes.
Sprint 330 Five-Pound Packaging Moving To Greener Eco-Friendly Paper Bags
The Sprint 330 five-pound packaging will soon change from a plastic pail to an eco-friendly, high quality, recyclable, pre-printed paper bag. This change results in an overall weight reduction for shipping materials (container, shipper and pallets) of nearly 42%. In addition, “we can package 50% more product in the same size shipping container, which helps customers more effectively manage shipping costs and warehouse space utilization on a per-pallet and per-case basis,” Lara says.
Sprint 138 Packaging To Change Before Year Ends
Becker Underwood’s premier Sprint 138 chelated iron also will be packaged in its own highly recognizable and recyclable pre-printed paper bag by the end of 2008. As with its sister Sprint 330 product, the petroleum-based plastic container will be eliminated in favor of the eco-friendly, recyclable paper bag. Also as with Sprint 330, distributors and retailers, especially, will immediately realize significant improvements in pallet capacity and warehouse space efficiency in managing Sprint 138, Lara notes.
“These innovative solutions create real savings for our customers in packaging, transportation and warehousing costs in these most challenging economic times,” Lara says. “But of equal importance, these changes play a role in reducing our use of petroleum-dependent packaging and this contributes toward the greater, greener goals of reducing transportation emissions and enhancing air-quality standards.
“We intend to seek similar opportunities with other products in our lineup,” Lara concludes.
