inbound

The craft beer industry has tapped into rising demand in recent years thanks to its attention to fresh ingredients, small batches, and creative recipes.

One ingredient gets less attention than the others, however— packaging. Brewmasters can bottle the finest artisanal lager, ale, porter, or stout, but business will be flat unless they can get the product safely to market. Flimsy cardboard six-packs or shaky case boxes can result in cracked and shaken bottles.

In response to this need, Canton, Ohio-based Combi Packaging Systems LLC has unveiled a packaging machine that helps brewers reduce labor costs and increase throughput, as they hop to the task of getting their craft-brewed products to distribution centers and retail shelves. Combi also manufactures equipment such as case erectors, case sealers, case packers, tray formers, ergonomic hand-packing stations, robotic case packers, and case labelers.

The new BrewPack machine addresses the tedious, labor-intensive work of hand-erecting the four- and six-pack carriers and master shipping cases, Combi CEO John Fisher said in a release. To see the machines at work, check out the videos at www.combi.com/brewery-packaging.

Six-pack case builder speeds craft beer
to market

The transition from active military service to private sector employment has never been an easy one, as many service members struggle to match their specialized training and experience to a fast-changing job market.

Many retiring defense industry professionals have an ace up their sleeves, however. Logistics is one task that military organizations perform to perfection, as warfighters in every branch deliver food, fuel, weapons, clothing, passengers, and equipment to distant corners of the earth. And they do it all while keeping their cool under pressures that would make many civilian laborers decide to stay in bed.

Now, the third-party logistics service provider (3PL) Legacy Supply Chain Services is launching a program to take advantage of this pool of talent. Legacy is unveiling a program called “Vets to WERC,” designed to promote the hiring of veterans into the supply chain industry.

Vets to WERC will be announced at the Warehousing Education and Research Council’s (WERC) 39th Annual Conference for Logistics Professionals, scheduled for Providence, R.I., May 15–18. (Visit www.werc.org for conference details.)

“We saw an opportunity to create a program with WERC that focuses greater attention [on] the value that military veterans can bring to companies in the warehousing, logistics, and supply chain fields,” Legacy’s director of marketing communications, Kyle Krug, said in a release. “The Vets to WERC program will create awareness of the natural alignment between returning military veterans with supply chain and logistics experience and the need for talented professionals in the supply chain industry.”

New program promotes
hiring of vets for supply
chain jobs

The traditional freight channels of ocean, truck, rail, and air offer a full range of options for shippers who need to balance cost, speed, and flexibility. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. thinks there is one color missing from that spectrum, however—the cargo blimp.

Build a big enough dirigible, and its helium lift could convey heavy freight faster than a containership, more cheaply than an airplane, and with more geographic freedom than trucks and trains, the thinking goes.

The project has been under development at the company’s secretive Palmdale, Calif., “Skunk Works” laboratory for years. But last month, Lockheed Martin tore the wrapper off the project when it announced it had launched a sales division to market the vehicle to the commercial cargo market, pitched as a solution for delivery to remote or roadless regions such as oil and gas fields, mining sites, or rural villages.

Officially called the LMH1 Hybrid Airship, the $40 million aircraft is designed to carry 47,000 pounds of cargo and 19 passengers, slung below its bulbous 300-foot-long balloon. Competing vendors such as Aeros of Montebello, Calif., and the U.K.-based Hybrid Air Vehicles are designing similar vehicles, but Lockheed Martin says it will get to market first, sending production models aloft by the end of 2018.