A clever concoction

Over time, the drums became a problem for the company, and it began looking for alternatives. A local distributor—Abbotsford, BC-based Barr Plastics—suggested something entirely different: a collapsible, reusable plastic tote.

Happy Planet was curious, and started testing the tote in question—the Citadel intermediate bulk container (IBC) from Buckhorn Canada—nearly six years ago. Today, the company uses a fleet of more than 100.

Each of the totes holds a food-grade liner, which suppliers can fill with up to 302 gallons or 3,000lb of juice through a built-in valve. Once the juice has been emptied at Happy Planet’s production line, the liner is discarded and the tote collapses. The folded totes are then stacked atop one another for backhaul trips, with six taking the space of one erected tote.

“When you’re shipping juices or liquids, you can only get a certain amount of product on a truck before you’re considered overweight,” explains Eric Kwan, sales manager at Barr Plastics. “This helps offset that. [Happy Planet] can ship the totes full one way, then collapse them. They can ship the collapsed totes back in much less space, or hang onto them until they have enough to fill a truck. Either way cuts transportation costs.”

Jim Morrison, general manager of Buckhorn Canada, adds that the sterile liners protect Happy Planet’s juices from contamination, which provides “substantial peace of mind” in an industry where safety is crucial.

Happy Planet now uses the totes to transport its highest-volume raw material—orange and apple juices—to and from suppliers, the warehouse and production. Korva likes that they’re reusable, and that they stack so well on return trips, but perhaps more than anything, she likes how much space they’re saving in the warehouse. She can now store in one pallet position what took up two in drums.

“That makes a huge difference, especially when you’re talking about refrigerated storage, which comes at a premium. You want to minimize the amount of space you’re using,” she says.

The inventory sweet spot

How Happy Planet will turn that raw inventory into finished goods is determined each Friday, when a team of five meets to go over the inventory on h
and, determine what needs to be sold and plan what should be produced in the coming days.

From that plan, Korva and her team prepare the raw materials for shipment to production. Some, like frozen raspberry puree, must be pulled from the freezer for a controlled thaw. Others, like juices, must be pulled and staged. All is sent to the processing facility just in time to start production on Sunday evenings.