Manufacturing and quality processes have a specific order that they follow to ensure that a product sample is prepared and that designs and colours are signed off. This ensures that the customer is satisfied with the offering and final product concept prior to placing a go-ahead for production to begin.

This pre-production process had been finalised at Consupaq last week on a specific new product, and a brand new customer was content with what they had seen and agreed on. What makes Astrapak different is that quality is so entrenched into its people that even those of the team not necessarily directly responsible for quality approval processes are alert and take pride in ensuring that Astrapak always strives for excellence.

By chance, some product samples somehow appeared on the desk of Mrs Berika de Vries, Consupaq’s Sales Assistant. Driven by Astrapak’s values and the desire to differentiate the company from other suppliers, she started reading the product information on the tube packaging proof, and immediately noticed some misprints that had been overlooked in the proofing process by the customer. The product was close to production and thanks to one of our dedicated team members these errors were noted.

Consupaq alerted their customer to their findings, where much relief was felt on what could’ve been a costly exercise.

Mrs Belinda van Pletzen, Astrapak Regional Sales Manager, said that there was an important lesson to be learnt. “A little bit of extra time and effort from our team goes a very long way and makes a big difference in the end,” she said. “If the errors had not been brought to the attention of the customer at that moment, the product would’ve been recalled after production and it would’ve resulted in a costly exercise for our customer.”

This is such an excellent example of how every single team member has a part to play in making sure that the company as a whole achieves the highest service and quality goals. At Astrapak, that extra mile is part of what we do!

The customer was extremely grateful to Mrs De Vries for her awareness in picking up the problem.