Laminations Hatches Custom Packaging Solution

VBoard® Helps Millions of Baby Chicks Arrive Safely and
Cost-Effectively Overseas

Aviagen, the world’s leading poultry breeding company, airships day-old breeder chicks from four of its hatcheries in the United States to customers around the world.

Laminations® VBoard® is helping to ensure that the precious cargo arrives safely and in a cost-effective manner.

Breeder chicks are small, but there’s nothing diminutive about the money at stake. “Each shipment is extremely valuable,” says Shannon K. Queen, who coordinates Aviagen’s transportation operation in Georgia. “When you’re talking about shipping an average of 20,000 chicks at a time, you’re talking a lot of money.”

“Last year, Aviagen shipped tens of millions of chicks overseas to places such as China, Russia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Iraq, Turkey South America and Africa,” Queen adds.

From the moment the chicks hatch, Aviagen’s crews have a very short window of time in which to get them by specially designed A/C trucks to one of five international airports and another 72-hour window to deliver them overseas.

Due to the tremendous amount of heat created by the chicks – as much as 2 BTUs each – they first are carefully placed in ventilated cardboard boxes. The boxes are then stacked on aluminum airline pallets, commonly known as cookie sheets, with 72 chicks per box and up to 170 boxes per pallet.

When arranging the boxes on the cookie sheets, a ventilated cardboard box is handcrafted and  filled with the proper amount of
day-old baby chicks. The boxes are configured to allow for construction of VBoard partitions, which create space between the boxes for maximum air flow during the long flights. The airline pallet is held together with a net. Only then is the load ready to be picked up by forklift and loaded into the plane’s cargo hold.

“Building the partitions used to be a very time-consuming and labor-intensive process,” says Nicki Van Wingerden, Laminations account manager. “About a year and a half ago, Aviagen switched totally from using wood to VBoard because some countries were concerned about potential infestation in wood being shipped from foreign countries.”

Now, using a table saw and a miter saw, Aviagen workers custom cut VBoard pieces to meet the size requirements and configurations of each load and stack the boxes of chicks using vertical VBoard pieces as partitions and horizontal pieces for additional ventilation. Once the load is stacked, pieces of 3X3 VBoard are placed around the top edge and stapled to the standing pieces. Two horizontal banding straps and the netting complete the palletizing process.

Compared to the wooden crates, the VBoard crates are lighter, less expensive and easier to construct while delivering just as much protection and ventilation, says Queen. An added bonus: no splinters.

Laminations Packaging Solutions Engineer Todd Hainer and Van Wingerden are now working with Aviagen on ways to streamline the palletizing process even more.

“Laminations has been a blessing,” Queen says. “I’ve been doing this for 16 years, and Laminations has made my job a lot easier.”

The chicks are shipped in

ventilated cardboard boxes that

are protected by a custom

configuration of VBoard products.

VBoard partitions create space

between boxes for maximum

airflow.

Each shipment is configured into

an airline pallet and loaded by

forklift.