Barton Jones Packaging take box making in-house with Kolbus Autobox line

Barton Jones Packaging, traditionally a packaging materials distributor, had been considering manufacturing their own corrugated boxes for a number of years. More and more customers were ordering bespoke sized boxes in smaller quantities and on a truly, “Just in Time basis”. The result was a need to stock large quantities of many different sized boxes. However, being a distributor by nature the prospect of having to manufacture in-house was daunting - could they easily transition to manufacturing boxes?  

Barton Jones managing director Justin Burrell and sales manager Steven Benham visited the Kolbus Autobox manufacturing facility in Houghton Regis to find out more. They also visited several Kolbus Autobox customers with similar installation to the Barton Jones business.  They quickly realised that boxmaking was easy with Kolbus Autobox machines! The Kolbus Autobox factory visit reassured them about the level of engineering excellence and combined with the clearly demonstrated customer support they saw Kolbus Autobox as an ideal long-term supply partner.

The Kolbus Autobox installation at Barton Jones’ Letchworth Garden City based production facility consists of a Kolbus AutoBox AB capable of producing 50 Fefco styles (many pre-programmed) at speeds up to 800 boxes/hour and Kolbus AutoBox RS (Rotary Slitter), developed to offer a simple yet fast method of cutting and scoring corrugated board ready for box making. The machine can be set up to produce as many as four correct size blanks from a single pass at speeds of up to 120 metres per minute.

Justin Burrell comments; “The Kolbus Autobox versatility enables us to manufacture in short and medium run lengths bespoke cases consisting of mini to jumbo sizes quickly and with ease. Previously we had struggled to supply these as no sheet plant could offer this type of quick turnaround work. We were letting our customers down or losing out on key business. As an example, one of our first live jobs was a batch of 500mm long by 100mm wide 0201 style boxes”.  
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Arran Sethi, Kolbus UK, Sales Manager comments; “This is their next step in natural growth. The Autobox opens doors for them to secure local, quick turn-around, high margin business. The Autobox machines are set up within a minute and have a very good average run rate of around 500 boxes per hour meaning that they can produce anything from one to thousands of bespoke boxes within 24-48 hours of order. We know that our machinery is perfect for this type of business model and I am sure Barton Jones will make a success of it”. 

This video, made by Barton Jones packaging (and not us for once) shows just how much this budding distributor loves their AutoBox AB300 and Rotary-Slitter machines!