What do Pandas and EPE Thailand have in Common? A Love for Bamboo.
Around the world with EPE…Thailand.
EPE’s rich history in Thailand encompasses four manufacturing locations throughout the country that support all facets of Thailand product manufacturing. From interior car parts to standard RSC cartons, EPE Thailand has provided quality packaging products to key OEM and CM’s for over twenty years. With in-house molding facilities for both PP/PE foam and volume thermoforming capabilities, EPE Thailand is vertically integrated to be your single resource for all of your packaging needs.
Thailand packaging has many of the local feel and culture that is specific to Thailand: unique in design, appearance, and color. Let us start with Thailand corrugated. I know what you’re thinking – all corrugated is the same. So you think, Padawan!
Have you ever opened a package and saw what appears to be yellow corrugated paper versus the rich brown corrugated color we normally see in the US? Why is it yellow in color?
The answer is that Thailand corrugated is made with a high percentage of bamboo wood fibers, which are naturally yellow in color. Wood is wood, and in Thailand’s case they use the resource most available to them – bamboo.
Bamboo has significantly harder wood fiber than standard trees used to make corrugated paper, and bamboo can increase the paper strength significantly when combined with recycled paper to increase the overall paper strength. Since bamboo grows in many regions of Thailand and neighboring countries, and has a reduced harvest cycle of only 3-5 years, it is a great alternative and supplement to using imported hardwood paper.
Thailand also has very different style in packaging design due to the labor market and approach to solving packaging challenges. Thailand’s labor costs allow for more direct hand assembling of packaging components, thus allowing fewer materials to be used and an overall lower cost of the total package. Where packaging designer’s in the US would focus on assembly and labor cost as a high cost process to be minimized, Thailand designers focus on minimizing material where ever possible, knowing that they have lower assembly costs as a trade off. The math makes sense, and the end result is often a lower overall total cost of packaging, along with less material and recycling impact after the packaging is discarded.
EPE Thailand sites are all examples in process efficiency with hundreds of workers coordinating to build, assemble, and produce high quality packaging for our customers. The focus on detail, attention to quality, and incredible customer support are all facets of EPE Thailand that every other EPE site try to emulate and hold as the gold standard. Along with incredible food and the nicest people you will ever meet, I would invite you to join us for dinner in Bangkok and experience a great country and the people of EPE Thailand!
