Kobra Flexpack

The Kobra Flexpack is not a shredder and should not be judged as one. It is a cardboard converter: used boxes go in flat, and a cutting and perforating head turns them into a 5 x 100 mm expanded mesh that opens out into padding mats and void fill. The point is to stop paying twice — once to dispose of incoming packaging, and again to buy bubble wrap and loose fill for outgoing shipments. A single machine on a packing bench does both jobs from the same material.

Key Features

• Turns waste boxes into packing material. The head cuts and perforates simultaneously, producing a lattice that expands into a cushioning mat rather than a pile of strips.
• Up to 250 kg (about 550 lb) of cardboard per hour. Enough to keep a busy despatch bench supplied without a dedicated operator. Kobra's US listing quotes up to 600 lb/hour for the same machine.
• 427 mm working width with a 20 mm entry. The 0.8 in entry height sets what it will accept: single and double-wall corrugate fed flat. It is a converter, not a box crusher.
• 5 x 100 mm grid. The perforation pattern that lets the sheet expand. Output can be used as a wrap-around mat, as base padding in a carton, or torn down for void fill.
• Quiet for a machine of this class. 58 dB(A) — it can sit in a packing area alongside people rather than in a separate room.
• Single-phase 115 V supply. A 2,100 W motor on ordinary US single-phase service, so no electrical work is needed in most warehouses.
• No consumables at all. There is no oil, no bag and no cutting media to reorder. The only input is the cardboard you were already paying somebody to take away.

Specifications

What's in the Box

Machine supplied assembled and free-standing with a 115 V power cord. There are no consumables to order and no waste bags, because the output is the product rather than waste. Allow floor space in front of the machine for flattened boxes going in and converted mats coming out; most sites end up putting it beside the packing bench rather than by the goods-in door.

Who Should Buy This — and Who Should Not

Buy it if you receive cardboard and despatch parcels in roughly similar quantities: e-commerce fulfilment, spare-parts distribution, a workshop that ships repaired equipment back to customers. The economics are simple to check — add what you currently spend on void fill and bubble wrap to what you pay to have cardboard collected, and compare that with the machine. Sites with a stated packaging sustainability target usually find the case makes itself.

Before ordering, weigh a week of incoming cardboard and compare it with a week of outgoing void fill. If the two are in the same range, the machine displaces a purchase and a disposal cost at the same time, and that is where the payback comes from.

Do not buy it if you are looking for a document shredder. The Flexpack has no security rating and does not appear on the DIN 66399 paper scale at all; it perforates cardboard and nothing else. It is also not a volume reducer — if the goal is to make waste cardboard smaller for disposal, a baler is the correct machine and this one will make the problem larger, not smaller. And if you need to destroy cardboard alongside confidential paper, the Kobra Cyclone takes both, though it destroys the board rather than converting it.