A package costing SEK 10,000 – or up to SEK 1,000,000…


Fin for JAS 39 Gripen

The Swedish Armed Forces and the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) are regular visitors at Scanpack.
But FMV doesn’t come looking for ordinary boxes. After all, JAS engines and aircraft canopies require special packagings…

FMV supplies equipment to the Swedish Air Force, Army and Navy. FMV recently signed a four-year contract with Nefab Packaging AB, a major exhibitor at Scanpack, for the outsourcing of its packaging operations. Nefab will have general responsibility for FMV's special-purpose packagings. Nefab and FMV will jointly draw up requirements specifications for the different packaging solutions, based on the product's dimensions, design, impact resistance, external environmental factors and handling requirements regarding transportation and logistics.

Cost-effectiveness
Nefab is responsible for production, which may either be carried out in-house or outsourced.
“We have all the resources for improving functionality and cost-effectiveness. Our strengths include international operations and knowledge of variations in transport and climatic conditions,” comments Fredrik Sölscher, CEO of Nefab Packaging Sweden.
Christofer Kärrdahl is product manager in supply logistics at FMV. For the past eighteen months, he has been working intensively on streamlining the company’s packaging operations. “There are big savings to be made through coordination. The Swedish Air Force is our biggest purchaser at present, but we are looking to bring our packaging operations up to the same level for the Army, the Navy and administration.
Aircraft really do require extreme packaging solutions, and costs can vary from a few tens of thousands of SEK to about a million SEK.
“However, packaging actually represents a very small portion of the total cost. If a JAS engine costs, say, 100 million SEK and the packaging costs 1 million SEK, that’s just one percent,” explains Christofer Kärrdahl.

Critical storage
Nevertheless, it’s a critical percent. There must be no risk whatsoever of transport damage. The engine is placed inside a cylinder and secured on guide rails. Because the moisture level is critical, we blow dehumidified air into the packaging cylinder during transportation and storage.
Of course, not all FMV’s packagings are equally expensive and complex. However, the vast majority of our solutions are special-purpose solutions – either object based, for instance for the transportation and storage of JAS engines and aircraft canopies, or non-object based, such as extra-reinforced plywood boxes in which objects of different sizes and dimensions can be packed with filling material for protection. According to Kärrdahl, packaging operations represent a minor cost in relation to the products to be packaged, and this cost can be reduced through rationalisation and coordination.
Signing the contract with Nefab Packaging Sweden was the first step on the way.