"We were running hot every Friday, and still missing weekend orders," says Emma Walsh, Operations Manager at Langley Move Co., a Berkshire-based e-commerce supplier of moving kits. "We needed steadier print quality and a way to scale without reworking every job." She found our team after a colleague sent her a link to **papermart** and asked, “Why aren’t we doing this?”
We sat down in their warehouse near Slough to map the problem. The team had grown fast, but the printed branding on corrugated boxes varied week to week. Walsh put it plainly: "If a customer orders 50 kits, the prints need to look the same from the first to the last." She first browsed specs on papermart com, then called the number she’d pinned on the wall labeled “papermart phone number.”
Company Overview and History
Langley Move Co. started in 2014 with a simple promise: flat-packed kits that arrive on time and make moving day less messy. They sell nationally via their webshop and partner channels, but their local footprint stays strong—many searches for moving boxes langley end up at their small showroom. Weekly volume hovered around 8–10k boxes, then spiked 3–4x during summer and year-end peaks. Seasonality magnified every weakness in printing and packing.
Until last year, they stamped a single-color logo onto stock corrugated board. It worked—until it didn’t. Seasonal surges exposed color swings, flimsy registration, and too many touch-ups. Returns crept up because kits looked inconsistent, even though the board strength was fine. The finance team didn’t like the scrap pile. The marketing team didn’t like the photos. Everyone was right.
Here’s where it gets interesting: the brand wasn’t chasing award-winning effects, just reliable two-color branding and crisp handling icons that matched web visuals. Their customers rarely cared about finishing flourishes; they wanted clear instructions, sturdy corrugated, and predictable delivery. That clarity set the technical brief: make the printed box predictable, then scale it.
Solution Design and Configuration
We structured the work as a working interview with Walsh and her lead press operator, Joe. Q: Why flexo? A: "Corrugated, volume, and ink.” For long and seasonal runs on corrugated board, Flexographic Printing with Water-based Ink made sense. We chose E-flute and B-flute SKUs, standardized die-lines, and set two ink stations for brand blue and safety black. For short bursts—limited promos or regional trials—we kept a Digital Printing lane on standby to avoid plate lead times.
Q: What changed on the line? A: "Plates, mounts, and make-ready," Joe says. We locked color targets with a ΔE tolerance band of 2–4 for the logo blue, tied to a press-side spectro workflow and a simple G7-style gray balance check. Die-Cutting and Varnishing moved inline to keep handling down. Gluing stayed offline for complex kits. Registration cameras weren’t in the original plan, but we added a compact unit after week two when misregister crept in on B-flute.
Q: Any commercial trade-offs? A: Walsh nods. "We still offer discount boxes for moving during off-peak promos. The flexo plates add a fixed cost, so we batch those SKUs rather than switching every hour." She pauses. "And about customer questions like how to get free moving boxes—we now run a returns-and-reuse program for lightly used cartons in the local area. It’s limited stock, but it’s honest and it helps." She points new customers to papermart com for specs and, when timing is tight, asks them to call the papermart phone number to lock scheduling.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Let me back up for a moment to the baseline. Their reject rate sat around 7–9% on branded boxes, driven by color drift and registration. First Pass Yield (FPY%) hovered near 82%. Changeovers could take 45–50 minutes on a bad day. Waste Rate in peak weeks pushed 12–14%. Energy per unit wasn’t tracked carefully, but everyone knew overtime lights weren’t helping.
Fast forward six months. FPY settled in the 92–94% band. Waste on branded runs moved to roughly 6–7%. Changeover time sits closer to 20–25 minutes after plate library clean-up and consistent mount tapes. Throughput rose by about 15–18% on standard SKUs. kWh/pack decreased an estimated 8–12% as overtime stabilized and fewer reprints hit the floor. Payback Period on the flexo and inline varnish package is tracking at 10–14 months, depending on seasonal volume.
But there’s a catch: short-notice SKUs still favor digital, and the flexo plates need care. The team logged one tough week when a late plate shipment and humidity swings pushed color outside the 2–4 ΔE band. We adjusted environmental controls and built a buffer library of plates for top movers. On the compliance side, FSC chain-of-custody is in place, and while these boxes aren’t for direct food contact, ink and board specs follow EU 1935/2004 principles. The turning point came when Walsh’s team owned the checklist. "It’s our process now," she says. If your corrugated brand work feels unpredictable, start with a clear spec, commit to plate discipline, and have a digital lane ready for the oddball job. If you want to talk through the trade-offs, reach out to papermart and we’ll walk you through the same interview we used in Langley.
