So a friend of mine — Lior, runs a beach sports importer in Herzliya — asked the other day how we pack the paddles for the long sea route. Fair question, because we lost about 40 paddles to handle cracks on one container back in 2022 and that was an expensive lesson.
Short answer first: we double-stack with EVA foam dividers, then shrink-wrap each pallet, and we don't use the cheapest 5-ply cartons anymore. Now we use 7-ply with reinforced corners. Adds about 0.6 USD per paddle on the carton cost but the claim rate dropped to basically zero.
Long answer:
The issue isn't really the racket faces — beech ply is pretty forgiving. It's the handles. When a container gets thrown around in a Mediterranean storm (and they do), the kinetic energy goes right into the handle where it joins the frame. That's the glue line. If the carton is soft and the paddles can shift even a few centimeters, you get little hairline cracks at the neck.
What we do now:
1. Each paddle gets a foam sleeve over the handle only — not the face. The face has the silk-screen on it and you don't want foam fibers stuck to the print. Sleeves are cut from EVA scrap from another department, costs us almost nothing.
2. We pack head-to-toe in the carton. Two rows, alternating direction. This means the handles are spread across the carton instead of all bunched at one end. The carton doesn't become front-heavy.
3. Cartons go on the pallet in a specific brick pattern — Lin (my colleague who runs packaging) drew up a diagram and we tape it to the wall. Looks slightly OCD but it stops the pallets twisting in transit.
4. Shrink wrap, double layer, with corner protectors on the four edges.
5. The whole pallet gets a piece of styrofoam on top before the final wrap, so if anything sits on top in the container it doesn't press straight down on the cartons.
For the Tel Aviv route specifically — Yiwu to Ningbo by truck, then Ningbo to Haifa by sea, then truck to wherever in Israel. Sea leg is about 26 days. The truck legs are usually fine, it's the sea that does the damage if its done. So we built the packing around the worst leg.
Anyway, that's the system now. Two years no claims from Israel. (Knock wood.)
