Secondary Packaging, typically the ubiquitous brown corrugated box, can be regarded as a necessary evil – you need to protect items during storage and in transit, but it adds little value to your product. So it is critical to ensure that the boxes that you do use meet your requirements, while adding as little cost as possible.

Corrugated cartons seem like straight forward items to specify and purchase, but in practice there are various ways in which you can ensure that the product you are buying is best suited for your purpose.

If you are buying large volumes of a limited range of sizes then make sure the design of the box is optimal. Some suppliers have access to box design software, and given the specifics of box size, weight when full and how you stack and load boxes, they can ensure that the box material weight is suitable. Given new types and weights of paper used in box manufacture, there may be an opportunity to re-specify the board grades and reduce cost, while providing the required level of protection to the box contents.

If your requirements are for smaller volumes of a larger range of boxes, then make sure that you order the optimum volume to get the best price, but without ending up with a warehouse full of unused boxes. We’ve all seen warehouses full of old, dusty, redundant piles of corrugated boxes! Depending on your supplier’s capabilities, they may be able to hold stock for call off, and at least this would enable you to reduce the volume of boxes held in your warehouse.

A new solution that is now becoming more popular is to produce boxes onsite to meet your specific requirements. By doing this you remove the requirement to hold stocks of many different box sizes, and you are able to produce boxes that meet your exact requirements. There are operational and environmental benefits in using this type of solution. By producing a box that meets your specific needs you no longer have to select the ‘next size up’. This can reduce logistics costs and also minimises the amount of void fill required. By reducing the amount of packaging required overall, you minimise the environmental impact and also reduce the frustration that we’ve all felt on opening a box to find it half full of ‘popcorn’.

However, when considering this sort of solution, it’s important to quantify all elements of the solution, so that you understand the overall cost of capital equipment, stock requirements, logistics, etc. This is where Expense Reduction Analysts can help you. By using our knowledge and experience of different packaging solutions we can help to identify the most cost-effective ways to meet your operational requirements.