Vacuum-packing doubles bedding container capacity
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, February 6, 2005
High Point — How do you squeeze out some of the costs of shipping Chinese-made bedding to the United States?
One answer: You literally squeeze the mattresses in giant packaging machines and vacuum-pack them.
That reduces mattress size by about 60%, which enables Chinese producers to load more than twice as many mattresses into containers. When the containers arrive in the United States and are unpacked, the mattresses bounce back to their original size, according to the companies marketing them.
Stylution USA, the newest importer of Chinese-made bedding, cites its vacuum-packing expertise as giving it an advantage in the U.S. market. Stylution USA is the U.S. marketing arm of Chinese-based Stylution International, which already makes case goods and upholstery for the U.S. market and now is adding bedding.
"In concert with a leading packaging equipment producer, Stylution International has designed a proprietary vacuum-packaging system that allows mattresses to be reduced in size by 60% for shipping, with 100% recovery in height, performance and appearance," said Ed Scott, CEO of Stylution USA.
That system will be packing innerspring mattresses for U.S. bedding retailers, with shipments set to start in May.
Scott said his company, headed by veteran Chinese furniture and bedding executive Jack Chen, tested varying compression rates before arriving at the 60% reduction. "We can reduce the mattresses by 60% and still get full recovery," he said.
Innerspring mattresses that are compressed too much exhibit wrinkled ticking, and foam and fiber doesn't fully regain their former size, Scott said.
Stylution has kept innerspring mattresses in their compressed states for more than a month before unpacking them, finding they fully regain their former characteristics, he said.
The 60% reduction enables the Chinese plant to pack about 2.5 times more mattresses into a container, depending on the sizes of the mattresses, Scott said. That cuts shipping costs by over half, helping make the beds more affordable.
Another Chinese company compressing mattresses is Sinomax Holding Group. Its foam-core mattresses are made of visco-elastic foam, polyurethane foam and latex foam. Marketing Director Rick Cassidy said the company can get about 250 foam mattresses in a container. The beds are packed so they can be shipped via UPS anywhere in the United States, he said.
The foam beds are reduced in size by about two-thirds, and fully regain their shape when they are opened, Cassidy said.
The idea of compressing beds to save shipping costs is not new. Innerspring units in the United States typically are shipped in compressed bundles, which are opened at the bedding plants and turned into finished mattresses.
Excel Bedding, the U.S. sales agent for the Xilinmen Group in China, is not compressing the beds it imports, said Vice President Ira Leibowitz. "We are working on it," he said. "At least initially we are looking at this on the lower end of the price spectrum."
Leibowitz said he has questions about how well foam-encased bedding, a key part of Excel's line, would stand up to compacting.
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