Latest / Through the Line: Packaging and Processing / Where RFID Pays Off, the Shrink Sleeve Comeback, and Drones Delivering Medicine: End of the Line

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Where RFID Pays Off, the Shrink Sleeve Comeback, and Drones Delivering Medicine: End of the Line · Through the Line: Packaging and Processing

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome to Through the Line, a podcast exploring innovations and information across the packaging and processing landscape from topics impacting consumer packaged goods and healthcare packaging to the latest technologies and food processing operations.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_05: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another End of the Line video podcast where us PMG editors get together on a Friday and talk about what we've been working on all week.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_05: I am Liz Cunio, Healthcare Packaging Editor in Chief.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_05: I'm here with Derek Thiel from Pro Food World, Sean Riley from OEM Magazine, and Matt Reynolds from Packaging World.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_05: So hello, everyone.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks for joining.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: Hi.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: Hi.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Glad to be here.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yay.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_05: So two of you guys are just here today coming off of some travel this week.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_05: Why don't we start with you, Matt?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_05: You were at a local event covering up some labels and RFID news.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, local, it is weird to go to a trade show and instead of most almost everybody is rushing off to O'Hare to catch their flight and worrying about delays and to just jump on the blue line and be home in 25 minutes is it's a revelation.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: I would pack expo would be similar too, because I'll be home for that as well.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, this is the former label expo, I think, that we've all probably, Sean and I know, have attended over the years.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: And now it's owned by Loop America.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: So it's just an international flavor.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: So there's one in, I think, Barcelona, there's one in various places around the globe, now underneath the same banner, talking about the same stuff.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: And really it's focused on or directed at, I should say, converters, the people who are taking raw materials and turning them into either labels or sometimes flexible packaging.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: So it's got an element of the printers and the digital printing.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's got an element of the adhesives and embellishment and decoration and all sorts of stuff.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a little difficult for me because my readers are a little downstream of the converter, but honestly, they're putting labels on everything and they're caught in the middle of the retailers.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: In our business, retailers are driving this push towards smart packaging via RFID.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: We know Walmart's sort of the 800-pound gorilla, RFID on lots of products down to the individual product level, batteries, these types of things.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: But for more fast-moving consumer goods, it's not quite there yet because the margins aren't quite there.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: For something that the margin is really small on, even adding an RFI, a very inexpensive RFID tag can be prohibitive because even though it's dropped, I think the price, the average price for a RFID tag is dropped something like 300 times or by a factor of 300 since the 90s when it came out.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's still, if you're doing something pretty small and where there's a low margin, adding five cents or seven cents per label per tag can be prohibitive, even at those tight margins.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: But the bigger picture is at the lot level or even down to the case level, say you're proctoring gamble and you have got a shampoo, you can be putting those RFIDs on cases of 24 or something like that, and that won't really impact the price.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: So I talked to some folks about that.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: Liz, there's a great crossover into the medical or pharmaceutical market, I think.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_03: I talked to Gwen Gwen Volpe, I think her name was at Fresanius Kabi.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: And some of the rollouts that they have, they do mostly medicines and pharmaceuticals for the hospital community as opposed to retail or pharmacy.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a targeted approach, but they've got this huge swath of products of medications.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: And they actually really only settled on 25 or 20 to 25 of their products.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: So it shows you that's kind of a microcosm of how RFID can work and it can work in volume and it can work in all sorts of packaging situations.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_03: This would be for ampules and vials and this kind of stuff.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: And it's extremely valuable.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: It just needs to, it's got a specific lane.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's not going to work in everybody's entire portfolio.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's likely going to be a select few products where the math really pencils out for what it's worth and the value that's being derived, both from the brand owner, more from the end user being able to keep track of things and where things are and inventories and stuff.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: So that would be for Walmart, that's valuable as a retailer.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: For let's say a hospital or a hospital chain, that would be valuable to know where your valuable drugs are.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: There's different pieces of value that accrue to different stakeholders.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just, it's in that limbo period between total adoption and just that the first mover, where it's now it's folks like Fresennius Kabi who are selecting a line of specific products that the RFID is going to work really well for.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's not everything, but they put the products through their paces and find where it lands.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: And Liz, you covered Fresenius Cabi a few times, haven't you?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we've talked to them about some of the stuff they have going on.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_05: And I've heard of maybe not necessarily Fresenius Cabi, but other companies doing a similar thing with as far as inventory goes.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_05: They can scan things quickly and see A, what they're running low on, right?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_05: But B, what's about to expire.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_05: They could use that product first, maybe, or what for rotating shipments and inventory like that.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_05: So interesting use cases that's not just at a user level or a patient level, but definitely within the hospital to save money and keep track of medicines.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_05: So definitely interesting.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and one other slowly but surely.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm sorry.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I just RFID is just coming slowly but surely, but at such a steady pace.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's been 15, 20 years since we've been hearing about it.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it still seems like it's now it's starting to happen, Matt, like you said, but it's still like you said, it's caught in that limbo between exploding as this groundbreaking technology that everybody talked about when it first came out.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's everything packaging, isn't it?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's just sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s, we all told were told it was going to be happening, and we're still in this kind of we haven't hit any kind of threshold or tipping point, whether it's sustainability or smart packaging.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: We're on a we're on a gentle slope towards the inevitability of all these things, but it is a gentle slope.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_05: And you brought up price, Matt, and that's I really only see it really bringing value to high-end products like medicine, right?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_05: Or I don't know, if maybe perfumes or spirits, but it's gotta be worth the money to do it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_05: And it has to be worth tracking these products for inventory, is what was where I'm thinking of.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_05: You're not gonna do it on cereal or something like that.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_05: It's just not this high enough stakes, maybe.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think so.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: I think there probably is some sort of floor or a lower limit as to products that just it's never gonna make sense on the unit level to be putting RFID on it.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: There's there are some sustainability implications as well.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: If you've got an all paperboard and you put a little metal on it, I think that's being eroded over time.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: I think most of these are compatible with recycling streams at this point, but that is a consideration too.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I think there's gonna be a floor.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: But once you get to that case level, let's say a 24-pack of something or a case of something, then the Walmarts of the world and the and the hospitals of the world are asking for it, which means the brands, whether they're deriving value from it for themselves, which I think they can, I think the forward-looking brand owners say, okay, we're we've got to put a chip on or a tag on these things.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: What can we learn about our own supply chain and what leaves our dock and what doesn't?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, I think that is where a lot of brands can derive value, is there's a gap between when, again, Proctor and Gamble sends out, or let's say Haynes, which is now owned by Gildan, sends out their lot of hundred socks in a case.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a gap, it goes through distribution, and then it arrives at Walmart's door, their dock, and then they can what happens when Walmart says, hey, this is supposed to be a hundred count, we got a 98 count of the these Haynes socks.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: What if Haynes, and now Gildan, I should say, is able to say, No, we left our dock with exactly 100, and we've got these scanners that have been able to pick this this up.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there's value to be had for those who seek it.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: There's gold in them, Nar Hills, but really the directive is coming from the retail side of things.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: And for some, it's just going to be a compliance thing.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: What do I got to do to get my product on their shelves?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll do the minimum.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: Others, I think more forward-looking ones are going to look to extract their own value if they're putting this tag on it, anyways.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that gap between whether there'd be chargebacks from Walmart or from a retailer for unfulfilled orders or unders, they would say in a case.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think this would give a brand owner or a distributor in between the ammunition to say, no, we've got all 100 in that case.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: They left here, so something must have happened on your end.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: One other limitation, I think, is there's metals and liquids.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's a little harder to scan, like I said, socks.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: You can scan RFID from outside a case and know what's in there.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: But once you get into metals and liquids, then you have to have start worrying about placement of the RFID tag on the product itself.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: And one interesting one is for the liquids, they're putting it on the neck and using shrink sleeves to be to put the inlay in a shrink sleeve.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: I talked to Novia about that.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: That's a new technology because when it's on the neck of a bottle of, let's say, I don't know, dairy or something like that, then there's no liquid that would be between the scanner and the tag itself, which is another interesting thing.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, I'm just talking like crazy.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: I would bet in an event all week, but there's a sustainability side of this that this is sort of the bridge.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: Speaking of what do you call it, shrink sleeves, who have gotten a bad name lately due to sustainability issues and stuff, that not only do we need them, that there's going to be an increased pressure on particularly your side of the coin, Derek.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: Some dairy products, whether it's Chobani or Fair Life, some of these that we've had Fairlife on this program before, these are products that are light sensitive.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: So they're they've been fine in their opaque HTPE containers for a long time because not a lot of light can get in there, but they still would use a uh a shrink sleeve over this to prevent any light from entering and spoiling the milk or the dairy or whatever it is.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: But I think brand owners are turning more towards PET, which is a transparent to display the product, and the recyclability profile of PET is really strong.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: So, anyways, they're going to need more shrink sleeve, like the Fairlifts and the Trabonis of the world are going to be turning to shrink sleeves.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: So the question then becomes which shrink sleeves are going to be recyclable?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: Do they need to be removed by the consumer, which we can't count on?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: There's a couple of interesting ones.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_03: Novia, I think, was one of them, where you actually grind the shrink sleeve material and it's a polyolefin base shrink sleeve material.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's not P E T G, which could be a contaminant.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: So there are, anyways, there are a few examples of shrink sleeves.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I think shrink sleeves are going to be back.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think polyolefin base, which won't necessarily recycle with the HTPE or PET under underneath, it goes through a tank and floats up.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: But the question is whether the shrink sleeve or the label itself goes through in with the PET or HGPE channel and is recycled with it, but there's such a low volume that it doesn't contaminate the bale or doesn't contaminate the flake and the granulate that comes out of it, or whether it's going to be separated away.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: But regardless, yeah, labels and shrink sleeves are definitely something to keep an eye on in the sustainability discussions with EPR and all that kind of stuff and recyclability as well.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, I spoke for a long time, but that covered my week this past week.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_05: You heard it here first.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_05: Shrink sleeves are back.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: They're back.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: Who knew?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_05: They are I didn't even I didn't even know they left, but they are fully back.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't, they never left, but I think shrink sleeves with that are compatible with recycling streams, whether again separated or chopped up with the plastic and going with that stream at such low levels to avoid fully contaminating the flake.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: I think they're we're gonna see them going forward.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: And in time, you need to keep light out of a transparent PET bottle.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: Shrink sleeve your man.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_05: All right.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_05: And now, Derek, I don't know if the soy sauce containers are shrink sleeved or not, but we can segue to you, have an interesting story.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: I would say before we get in there, they are, and actually it was tag leaf.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: Tag a woman at Umbra was her name, and she just anecdotally she lives in Italy and she notices specifically soy sauce is using a lot of shrink sleeves because they're in clear bottles.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think that soy sauce, like the Kikomon would be one, for instance, benefit benefits from keep keeping light out of that very briny material that's inside.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for the segue, Matt, because exactly who I'm gonna talk about is Kikamon.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they although construction started in April of 24 and they began production in May of this year, uh they just held Kikamon just held the opening of a new plant in Jefferson, Wisconsin.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a uh plant that we've been tracking for a while.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's their third plant here in the US.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's on 100 acres, so there's plenty of room for expansion, and it's I believe, yeah, 240,000 square feet, which was a good sized plant, but not enormous.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: But like I said, it's the the fact that they're able to it's sitting on 100 acres, so they got a lot of room to expand, which they uh expect to because people in North America and South America really like their soy sauce.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta keep those uh shrink sleeves coming.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: But this plant is interesting, is so I've I'm still working on getting inside this plant.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh because it's unique in the sense that they want to have their recipe that uh quality consistency across the board.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: What was what works in Japan, they want to have it work here in the US as well, which means they're shipping these container or the pots, cauldrons, I don't I can't remember what they're off the top of my head what they're called, but shipping those from Japan to the United States, to Wisconsin, even though it's on some of the Great Lakes.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think they had to ship them through the Great Lakes, these these vats, I guess that's a better word, to this plant to make ensure that the quality is exactly what you would get in Japan.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's this process again, like I said, they started manufacturing in May.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: They don't expect to start shipping until October just because they wanna because it has to sit and I'm not a soy sauce aficionado, so I'm not sure exactly the process of how they're made, how it's made.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Why I want to get into Kikamon.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: People at Kikamon, if you're listening, please invite me.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: DTL at PimaMy Media Group.com.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to get into that plant, see how it's done, and see how exactly how long it takes for that for that process to happen, because I know that yeah, it's not something that you get there.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's some not just with soy sauce, but coal field.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to get it exactly right, there's a certain old school process that's followed.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: In the manufacturing world, it's all often about or food manufacturing, it's all it's often about speed, like how quickly can we get this out the door?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you want more out on the shelves, that means you have to speed up the production process.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: But some of these recipes that they're dealing with isn't exactly aren't exactly conducive or can't be rushed.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: You can't rush for sure.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a fermentation process, isn't it?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Correct, yes, thank you.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's the word I was looking for.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: So anything that's again why that's why we were talking about the it's like it's a light sensitive product because that can create fermentation right there in the bottle once it's been bottled.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: So if and when you do get into that plant, you got to look and see if they've got tripack or axion axon.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of shrink sleed providers that I'd be interesting, interested to know if they're on the Kikamon packs.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like I said, I'm still working on that one.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's people I've been talking to because Kikamon's got other things in the works as well.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so the people I've been dealing with have been looking at those future-facing projects in addition to this one that just got launched.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: So they're excited for this one, obviously, but they're already looking ahead for what's coming next.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: But it's interesting too, like I said, that all these companies, a lot of companies are focused on speed, but you can't rush some of these processes.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know if that tees you up, Sean, as to some of the things that you've been seeing regarding very interesting thing you've said there, Derek.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I had spent some time.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was not able to take the train as I had to, it was in Montreal, the PMMI annual meeting.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Bunch of good stuff, a lot of tariff talk, obviously, since we were in Canada.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody was nice to me, even though I was an American, which is good.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the one thing that I that really stuck with me that I that I came out with that I found interesting was they had a CPG panel with a couple of of CPG reps up there talking about what they're seeing.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the PMMI data from top to top and Vision 2030 and stuff like that still has speed as the number one priority, as the thing that everybody is looking for.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as that came up on the screen, one of the gentlemen was from Old Dutch Foods, their Calgary facility, and immediately jumped and said that should be lower down on the list.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that changeover and flexibility should be higher up on the list, which would point to what you're talking about, with them needing to be flexible with that type of different products.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: The old Dutch guy, I used him as an example because there's 170 SKUs or something like that they have, and they need to be able to switch and swap, and speed isn't the be-all end all.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, I found that very surprising that both of them kind of poo-pooed that.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: But from talking to you guys offline beforehand, it seems like all of you have been hearing that across the board.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is that true?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: For me, it's skew pro proliferate proliferation, that's hard to say.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and just the the multiple varieties and multi-packs and sizes from one ounce to 12 ounces and the requirement for machines, whether it's food and beverage or personal care or whatever it is, to be flexible enough to be handling huge ranges and different run lengths and that sort of thing.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I can imagine from the contract packaging side too, that that's even more important, more critical for them to when they're buying a piece of equipment, they need to make sure that a piece of equipment is going to be functional and running in their facilities for 20 years, even though they only have a contract to use it with whatever private label company for one year.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I think, yeah, flexibility is the new speed.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the plans that I've been in, it's all about flexibility.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of you're you're gonna love this, Liz.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the meat companies that I've been into, as I've mentioned before, that they're using manual labor instead of machines because humans are more easily adaptable to different processes and different cuts of meat that are necessary for what the customer wants.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And even along the lines, there was one plant I'm thinking of specifically that had a lot of open floor space because they said in case we need to shift the round for a new SKU that comes in, customer wants this.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: We got to be able to adapt, just move our machinery around to create a new line altogether to get rolling on that.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and it's not just that plant.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: There are multiple plants, not just I should say meat processing plants.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: There are multiple plants where I've seen that as well.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because, like you said, Matt, that it's not all about long runs where you need to set it up and just run one product over and over.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: There are different flavors that you mentioned, different SKUs that just yeah, different channels.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: There's you got to do something for Amazon and you got to do something for the physical retail channel, and there's direct to consumer, and they all require something a little bit different of your same one product, even if it is one product, it's got to be in 12 different packages or bottles or something.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, that definitely resonates with what I've heard on my side of the coin, Sean.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, flexibility and ease of changeover because you're switching between products, you have to be able to change pretty deftly on your feet.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, that that I just am so used to again being an old hand at this of hearing speed of the same thing running, but we're those days uh seem to be in the past.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and yeah, we I think we've talked about I can't remember which episode, just about modular systems where you've got this entire thing where you just basically get the casters out and just move it on to a different place.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you got this whole so you can just assemble different pieces of the system together and just roll something new in in hours instead of days or months or whatever it normally takes to do a changeover of that size.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_05: I apologize for my cat friend bumping in.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_05: We're all odd of sorts here, or dog sitting from my mom, and so the full house, and everyone's acting a little crazy per per usual.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_05: But I to close, I wanted to just bring up a very fun topic of drones.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_05: We covered a facility, a hospital network in Florida is starting to use some drones, or gonna be piloting using some drones to deliver medicine in lab samples and such to either patients or other facilities that they own.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_05: So it's an interesting story.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_05: The company's called Zipline, who is the actual drone.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know if they're the manufacturer, but they're the drone company, if you will.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_05: So diving into that story a little bit, talked a little bit about what that means for cold chain logistics in our area.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_05: It's an eight-pound limit.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_05: So for the whole package, which so you're they're limited on what they're carrying, but they can still do the cold chain and have the proper temperature, sensors in there, ice packs, what have you.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_05: So it's really interesting to hear a word that could be heading.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_05: I can't imagine waiting for my prescription and then seeing this drone come and landing on my porch.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_05: But but for the cold chain, it brings up a lot of questions of being outside, even maybe more exposed to the elements than maybe a truck would be or train or what have you.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_05: But one kind of interesting point was the customer can choose their delivery time, which we don't always maybe get to right now when we talk about e-commerce shipping and such.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_05: So choosing your delivery time helps ensure that it's not sitting on the porch any longer than it needs to be.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_05: So I thought that was an interesting point.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_05: And then Derek, you mentioned that you've been seeing the drones, not for this company, but for Amazon in general.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_05: So I think drones are coming.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I watched one.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was heading off to a soccer game, and I watched one fly over the road and land in a neighborhood that I've got friends living there, and it didn't just drop the package from a distance, it landed like right at the right on the step.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's interesting seeing things like that fly over.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't a drone, but you know, those Chinese lanterns, Asian lanterns.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: I almost shot one down over the 4th of July with a mortar.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: That was fun.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_05: That's very fun.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: I had to bring that up just because it sounds like an international incident that you're serious.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we don't condone at all.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_05: Oh it was an accident.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, it just interesting that we're talking about cold chain that we we might be talking about via air, these tiny little drones.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Who with cold chain?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: I I some they're sizable, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're able to pack some sort of dry ice in there to keep oh yeah, and eight pounds is a kind of more than you I even think it is when we talk about someone's medicine delivery.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_05: That's uh that no one's generally your medicine doesn't weigh eight pounds, so it's definitely like a bigger capacity than I thought.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, in another hospital, the Cleveland Clinic has been using it to deliver medicines to patients' home.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_05: So right now they're operating in within five mile radius, limited scope of the project, but very cool to see more drone deliveries in our future.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I find healthcare and pharma doing that to be surprising.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: It seems not as regulated as it could be, but I guess it's no different than a truck dropping it off.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to wrap your head around it being flying through the air.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think there'd be fewer hands on that in an instance like that.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have you're skipping that delivery driver, it's going straight from the Paxit into the drone to straight to the consumer.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Good point.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: One one thing I think about with that too, and there's some tests going on in suburban Chicago, but I live in Chicago, Chicago, and the problem there is it these drones are going to have trouble with high with really tall buildings and narrow corridors going between them.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then exacerbating that is that because they're really tall buildings, they might have hundreds of units.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: So whereas the footprint of Liz's house might be the same and have one family plus a dog, apparently, the that same footprint might have 20 families in Chicago because it's a 10-story duplex or something like that.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: So that drone has only so much room to land and might be delivering to 20 families in a small spot.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: So then you get proliferation of drones.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting urban considerations, but I think definitely if it's working in Florida, there's uh, you know, there's some, I think there's more sprawling land than there is in some of these tight urban environments.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, for sure.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_05: The woman I spoke with from Baycare was actually saying how bad traffic is in Florida in the area.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_05: And so this is actually ensuring people get their medicines faster.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_05: It's not sitting in traffic.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_05: So I thought that was an interesting.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_05: The little drone can bypass the traffic, but in in inner cities and tall buildings and such, yeah, not an ideal solution.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_05: So we'll see what happens with that.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_05: But exciting to hear about something unique and different going on in healthcare.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Even with those, yeah, you got different areas of airspace.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like an area where I am, it's pretty open, you know, but you can't fly drones over because you got lunatics trying to shoot stuff down.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: It takes one and no one, Derek.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: Oh man.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that is fabulous.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you all for sharing what you've been working on this week and what you've been in your travels and writing about and seeing.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_05: And thank you for everyone at home tuning in on this another end of the line episode.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you for listening to Through the Line Packaging and Processing.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_04: You can listen to more episodes on all streaming platforms.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_04: Be sure to visit us at packworld.com, profoodworld.com, and healthcarepackaging.com for more packaging and processing news.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_04: This podcast was edited by Brady Guns.