Colter & Peterson supplies the glue for corrugated box provider TR Enterprises

Specialty print provider TR Enterprises recently encountered a sticky equipment situation, but owner Kelly Robinson knew how to resolve it. Her company affixes oversized labels to the large corrugated boxes used to package Sony and Vizio television sets sold at Costco stores in southern California.

Home entertainment equipment today dwarfs the TV sets sold 40 years ago when Robinson’s father, Terrence Moll, opened the Baldwin Park, California business, located 25 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. She found the answer to her equipment predicament by contacting Colter & Peterson. An authorized representative, C&P installed a rebuilt Potdevin heavy duty type-Z sheet coating and gluing machine. The 60” device accommodates wide sheets of paper, cardboard, and corrugated material.

“We still use the original gluing machines my father bought from Colter & Peterson 40 years ago,” remarked Robinson, who first got involved in the business during her high school summers. She attended college to study hotel/restaurant management, worked in the restaurant business for 10 years, got married and had children. Living near San Diego at the time, her parents wanted her to be closer to home so she returned and took over running the business in 2001.

The larger rebuilt Potdevin machine gets a substantial workout five days a week, says Robinson.

“We produce 7,000 boxes a day, sometimes from two, 9-hour shifts. The corrugated boxes are used for 60” television sets and are up to 130” long, and we have to glue two paper labels to each box,” informed Robinson. Her workforce numbers 12-14 full-timers but often doubles with seasonal workers at busy times.

Robinson’s staff glues the labels – which includes a picture of the television set and legal information – and then runs them through a roller press before they are palletized and delivered. Robinson said the labels typically measure 38” x 50-60”, but at times will consume 40” x 131” of box space. She also ordered two Edge Gluer roller presses from C&P that were delivered with the Potdevin machine. The roller presses flatten the labels before they are glued to the boxes.

“We still use the original machines for smaller, plain white 8” x 10” boxes, but with our volume growing and the size of the boxes increasing, we had to find a larger machine,” recalled Robinson. “I contacted Vince Payne with Colter & Peterson and he told me he had a machine the size of what we needed. We now can run four machines on one shift and that is making us more efficient.”

As North America’s largest independent distributor of paper cutters and paper handling equipment, Colter & Peterson has the resources to quickly handle most back-end situations that involve cutting paper. Robinson said knowing that C&P’s equipment is very reliable made it an easy decision to turn to them for this solution.

“The Potdevin machine was already assembled and C&P’s technicians only had to make some minor adjustments. It’s fast, simple to operate, easy to clean and maintenance is very low,” said Robinson. “We noticed early the glove roller was not balanced but the service technician quickly fixed it. The older machines have had a great run. We’ve only had to do simple maintenance and replace the motors when they wore out over time.”