Export packing for aluminium profiles — what to specify

Packing is the last process, and the only one nobody specifies

Every other line on the order gets argued over. Alloy gets challenged, tolerances get negotiated, finish gets sampled. Packing gets a phrase copied from the last order, and it is the only process that happens after all the value has already been added.

It is worth being blunt about the economics. A scratch that appears in transit is not a transport problem you claim back later — it is a finish you have already paid for once and will pay for again: as rework, as a discount argument, or as parts quietly used on the elevation nobody looks at.

It is also the cheapest part of a specification to improve, because most of what goes wrong is decided by choices that cost little at the factory and a great deal at the destination.

What actually damages a profile between our floor and yours

Profiles rarely arrive broken. They arrive rubbed. As soon as a bundle can move internally — because it was strapped while the metal was still warm, because the interleaving compressed, because a truck braked hard — two finished faces slide against each other for the length of the voyage. The marks run along the profile, and they show in exactly the raking light a façade lives in.

The second mechanism is point loading. Straps, forklift tines and the corner of whatever bundle sits underneath all press into a section that was designed to carry distributed load, not the edge of a band. Thin walls and the visible face of an open section are where it shows first.

The third is water, and it is the one that surprises people. A container loaded at a humid port and opened weeks later in a cooler climate has been condensing on its own ceiling for the entire voyage. Aluminium that stays wet under a wrap develops white staining — not corrosion in the structural sense, but absolutely a rejection in the visual sense, and on an anodized surface it cannot be polished out.

Interleaving, film and protective tape do three different jobs

Interleaving — paper or foam between the pieces — stops face-to-face contact inside the bundle. For finished material it is the single most effective item in the whole packing specification, and it is also the first thing that quietly disappears when a supplier is fighting a cheaper quotation.

Stretch or shrink film holds the bundle together and keeps dust off. It does not stop condensation. A sealed wrap with humid air inside it holds water against the metal instead of letting it dry, so a humid route is handled by deciding ventilation and desiccant, not by wrapping tighter.

Protective tape on visible faces is for material that will be handled again — cut, machined, glazed, installed. It has a removal window, and heat and sunlight shorten it. Ask for the film type and that window in writing, and pass it to whoever installs, because tape left on a façade through a summer becomes an adhesive removal job that nobody quoted.

The bundle, the pallet and the container are three separate decisions

Bundle size is not a packing detail. It is a question about your yard: who unloads it, with what, and onto what. A bundle sized for a plant with an overhead crane is the wrong bundle for a site with one small forklift, and the correction gets made on the ground, with a knife and no plan.

Length is the other constraint to settle early. We can extrude up to 12,000 mm, but a length that is comfortable on our run-out table is not automatically a length that loads into a container, clears your gate and turns the corner into your workshop. Agree the final cut length against the destination and the transport, not against the drawing.

Whether the load travels palletised or as loose bundles changes both the freight cost and the number of times a piece is touched. Every additional handling event is one more chance for the damage described above — that is the real argument for palletising, not tidiness.

Marking, and what still has to be readable after six weeks at sea

Bundles get separated. A delivery that leaves as one clean lot arrives spread across a container floor, and by the time it reaches the shop it may sit in three different racks.

So each bundle should carry alloy, temper, finish, section reference and the lot it belongs to, on a label that survives water and abrasion — not a paper slip taped to the film. If your incoming inspection has to open a bundle to find out what it is, it will open bundles that never needed opening.

Reconcile that against the packing list before the container is sealed, not at your gate. A discrepancy found in our warehouse is an email. The same discrepancy found in yours is a claim.

What to write into the enquiry, and what to ask for before the doors close

Say the destination, the season and the transport mode. A humid tropical route in summer and a dry overland run are not the same packing problem, and a supplier who packs them the same way is not thinking about your order.

Say who unloads, with what equipment, and the maximum bundle weight and length your site can actually take. This is the single most useful sentence a buyer can add, and it is almost never there.

Say whether the material is installed as delivered or cut and machined afterwards. That decides whether protective tape is helping you or becoming your problem.

And ask for photographs of the packed load before the doors close. It costs nothing, it takes minutes, and it is the only record either side will have if the load arrives disturbed. Send us the destination and how you unload, and we will tell you how we would pack it.

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