New solution to an old challenge

David Clevenger of South Florida retailer City Furniture has relied for years on machines made by International Baler Corp. (IBC) to handle the steady streams of old corrugated containers (OCC) generated at the company’s several locations.

When space permits, City Furniture uses IBC horizontal, open-end autotie models like the AT-4843-10-75-80 to handle the OCC, which often comes in the form of large boxes designed to hold sofas, chairs and other sizable pieces of furniture.

“This allows IBC to provide a U.S.-built vertical-tie option to many other users who don’t have the space for a traditional autotie.” – Sean Usoff, IBC

In 2019, Clevenger and his colleague Carlos Gaviria of City Furniture’s Ocoee, Florida, location, came to IBC with the same challenge of oversized boxes but with a twist: the need for a high-volume auto-tie baler that could operate on a smaller footprint than a traditional unit.

Gaviria says the vertical baler his location had been using was proving inadequate. “The size of the boxes we bale in the furniture industry were oversized for the vertical balers we were using. This led to production and safety issues and, ultimately, increased staffing.”

IBC Director of Sales and Marketing Sean Usoff quickly determined IBC could offer a solution: altering a traditional autotie by relocating the side-mounted tier to the top of the frame, reducing the baler’s footprint. “We had prototyped the Vertical-Tie unit some years ago, but at the time the project got shelved,” says Usoff. “However, the design progress on that project became the model for the standard tier we still use today, so I knew the foundation for a vertical-tie autotie was solid.”

By early December 2019, the new IBC VT-4843-10580 vertical-tie baler was installed at the City Furniture location in Ocoee. “When David Clevenger approached me with this particular situation, I went to engineering, and we all agreed it was time to get this model out into the field.”

In Ocoee, Gaviria says the IBC installation team was “very professional and knowledgeable; the install was flawless. Training was a breeze,” adds Gaviria. “Since we were already familiar with the controls from using other IBC models, we have had almost zero issues using the VT baler.”

Usoff is excited to add the Vertical-Tie to the IBC catalog. “This was all about providing a solution to a customer’s specific need but, looking ahead,” he states, “this allows IBC to provide a U.S.-built vertical-tie option to many other users who don’t have the space for a traditional autotie.”