PACKAGING HINTS FOR BESWICK ANIMALS

Packaging Beswick Animals for postage which is to be sent by your local postage or freight company is an interesting experience.

Some people are of the opinion that packaging to send locally or within your own country is different to packaging for an overseas sales. There is no difference. In both instances the item/s need to be securely packaged.

We have been shipping Beswick and other breakable items both within Australia and Internationally since 1998 and if you adhere to the following hints, you should be able to send off the item with confidence that it will arrive safely and intact at its destination.

From our discussions with the local post office as a "rule of thumb" your parcel should be able to be dropped from a height of about 1 metre (waist height) and a well wrapped item will not break. As you can appreciate when your parcel is going to be handled many times along the way from the point of despatch to its new home it will be dropped several times.

If this facts scares you, then you should probably have the item professionally packaged particularly if the item is very valuable. Rarely does one of our item gets damaged in transit. Sometimes the box has shown some damage to the outside, however the item was still intact inside. If you pack well, damage should be rare if you follow or use these hints.

• if the figurine has delicate parts such as "horns", antennas or part of the animal sticks out, then wrap these items first individually with either bubble wrap or tissue. As a hint just wrap them carefully and do not use sticky tape here. There has been many times a delicate part has been broken when trying to undo sticky tape around the packaged fragile part
• once the delicate parts are wrapped the next area will probably be legs (if the figurine has them). The legs appear to suffer the most damage as they are generally thin and very fragile. We recommend wrapping the rear legs together with bubble wrap, then do the front legs with bubble wrap and finally wrap around the 4 legs together. You will notice that the bubble wrap build up and normally matches the size of the body. (we do not recommend using tissue to wrap around the body it offers no cushioning or protection against impact.)
• you can now bubble wrap around the whole animal. The bubble wrap is relatively cheap)so use as much as you can within reason. This step is the one which will save your item when it is dropped in transit. Maybe just use one small piece of sticky tape to tack down the bubble wrap. As a hint place the tape over the centre of the body and not over fragile parts such as the legs. When the recipient tries to undo the sticky tape its best if they can do this over the body rather than the legs.
• you should now have your figurine securely wrapped in bubble wrap and it should be one and a half to two times bigger than the figurine itself.
• Next you need to place the bubble wrapped figurine inside a suitable cardboard box. Try to select boxes which are quite "firm" rather than "flimsy" boxes. Place some void vill (plastic bubbles "peanuts") or some other suitable fill such as shredded paper. Ensure that the figurine is positioned in the centre of the box so that maximum protection is afforded.
• Tape up the box. Before addressing the parcel once the outside of the box is taped shake your parcel several times. The figurine should not move inside the box and it should appear solid. If you can detect the figurine moving the item is not packaged well enough. You will need to repack the void fill.
• Address and post off and breathe a sigh of relief when you are informed by the purchaser that your item has arrived safely.

Should you repack your boxed item into another void filled box ?

On very rare and valuable or extremely fragile items you may wish to do this. Most of the time there is no need and it does add