History of the world’s fastest box making machine

Light, durable, easy to use and recyclable, the humble cardboard box is back in style.

The rapid growth of online shopping has led to a surge in demand for cardboard boxes, or “cardboards” to use their official name. Global e-commerce revenues have more than doubled in the past five years and will follow a similar growth trajectory over the next five years.

One thing is clear: As we rely more on home delivery, we will need a lot more boxes.

Here, we look back at the origins and evolution of box-making machines, which are essential to meeting the growing demand for online retail.

back to basics

Have you ever wondered how a box making machine works? A flat corrugated sheet is fed into the machine, printed, creased, slotted, glued and folded into a box, and then the other It is ejected in bundles from the edge.

Industry pioneer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Machinery Systems (MHI-MS) has been developing this technology since the mid-1950s and now produces some of the world’s fastest machines.

In the 1970s, this innovation proved to be a game changer. Previously, he had connected multiple box-forming machines to a single motor and operated them at low speeds and power. The machine furthest from the motor had poor box cutting accuracy and the manufactured boxes did not fit properly during assembly.

MHI-MS was one of the first companies to introduce direct-drive servo motors that power a single unit of machinery, allowing different units to operate at different speeds.

“The direct drive motor increases the precision of the box making machine, allowing it to run at higher speeds and producing larger quantities and higher quality boxes in a variety of sizes,” says MHI EMEA Corrugated & Printing. Giovanni Bettini, Sales Director of the Machinery Division, explains.

think outside the box

MHI-MS launched the first EVOL corrugated box machine in 2003 and has grown to become an industry changer.

Not only is EVOL the fastest in the world, it also operates reliably at very high speeds with high folding accuracy and produces the highest quality boxes. Most modern boxes are assembled by machine as part of an automated process, so accuracy of installation is very important.

One machine can produce 350 boxes per minute or 21,000 boxes per hour. Let’s think about this number for a moment. What if we could double the output?

Using MHI-MS’s pioneering dual slotter unit, the giant corrugated sheet can process two boxes simultaneously and cut the sheet in two, delivering a throughput of up to 42,000 boxes per hour. Masu.

“This EVOL can do the job of two of our competitors’ machines, so our customers don’t have to have two different machines,” says Bettini.

It is also environmentally friendly, reducing annual ink loss by more than 10 tons and average annual wash water volume by more than 750 tons compared to conventional designs at the company’s Mihara box manufacturing facility in Japan. This was revealed in the investigation.

Tests have shown that replacing two lines with one EVOL machine reduces power consumption by 43%. This equates to a reduction of 147 tonnes of CO₂ emissions per year, and the equivalent of him planting 10,300 trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the air.

sustainable future

This idea of ​​sustainability extends beyond the machines themselves. At the Mihara Plant in Hiroshima Prefecture, we are working to achieve carbon neutrality by switching the electricity used for all business activities from fossil fuel-based electricity to on-site solar power generation.

As a result, 97.7% of annual CO₂ emissions will be reduced by the end of March 2024. Similar clean energy initiatives are also being implemented at the company’s Amsterdam office, which is already carbon neutral.

As the shift to online shopping gains momentum, the box-making machines this industry relies on need to keep up and produce sustainably.

So the next time a boxed order arrives on your doorstep, consider what’s going on behind the scenes to make it possible.