A new packhouse orders crates once and lives with the consequences for a decade. The specification is usually right, because people research that part. The quantity is nearly always wrong, and it is nearly always too low – with the second most common mistake being a fleet of the wrong single size.
Why the quantity comes out low
The calculation is usually done on daily throughput, which ignores the crates that are in transit, in the wash, in storage, at the retail end or simply not yet returned. A crate is only available if it is in the yard and clean. The working fleet is the throughput requirement multiplied by the cycle time in days, and the cycle time is the number nobody has measured. Sizing properly is the subject of working out crate fleet size for a season.
Ordering one size
It looks efficient and it is usually a mistake, because a packhouse rarely handles one crop at one fill weight. A single crate size that is too large wastes transport volume on light crops and too small forces double handling on heavy ones. Two sizes – one for field and bulk, one for the packed retail unit – covers most operations better than one compromises.
Not ordering a spare allowance
Crates get damaged, lost and retired. An order sized exactly to the calculated need has no margin, and the first season will consume it. Ten per cent is a normal spare allowance; if the loop is open or the loss rate is unknown, fifteen. Ordering spares with the first order also avoids the colour and batch mismatch that comes from a second production run a year later.
Skipping the sample stage
Ordering a fleet without running samples through the line is the most expensive shortcut available. A crate that catches on a transfer plate, that does not stack squarely or that is awkward to carry will be discovered on the first day of the season, when it is too late to change anything. Ask for samples and put them through the actual line.
Forgetting the wash
A crate fleet needs washing, and the wash capacity has to exist before the crates arrive. A packhouse that buys three thousand crates and has a wash bay sized for five hundred has bought a bottleneck. Where washing is contracted out, the contract has to be in place before the season, not negotiated during it.
What to decide before ordering
Footprint and pallet pattern, fill weight per crop, stack height, whether crates nest, wash method and capacity, outdoor storage, and identity marking. Seven decisions. None of them are difficult and all of them are expensive to change later.
The mistake that costs the most
Ordering before the pallet pattern is fixed. The crate footprint has to divide into the pallet the operation will use, and that is often decided by a customer requirement that arrives after the crates have been bought. A crate that fits the wrong pallet wastes transport volume for the life of the fleet, and it cannot be corrected without replacing the fleet.
Confirming the pallet size and the customer’s pallet specification before ordering costs one phone call. Where the answer is genuinely unknown, choose the footprint with the widest compatibility rather than the one that best suits today’s assumption – flexibility is worth more than a few per cent of pallet efficiency.
What we can do
We supply produce crates and will work through fleet sizing with a new packhouse rather than just filling an order. Tell us the crops, the daily throughput and the cycle time you expect, and we will say what we think you need – including if that is fewer than you were going to buy.