Faster, greener packaging for an e‑retail age

UK buy­ing habits are chang­ing fast as con­sumers spend more time online and less time on the high street. The shift has seen prof­its for online retail­ers’ soar, but it has also pre­sent­ed them with major deliv­ery prob­lems.

Sal­is­bury-based Test Val­ley Pack­ag­ing is at the fore­front of a dri­ve with­in the pack­ag­ing indus­try to design sus­tain­able, cost-effec­tive inno­va­tions that help retail­ers with the safe, effi­cient deliv­ery of their prod­ucts.

Michael Steed­man, Test Valley’s mar­ket­ing direc­tor, cites Black Fri­day as illus­tra­tive of the chal­lenges retail­ers now face. Last year, the retail bonan­za week­end in late-Novem­ber saw such large vol­umes of online sales that retail­ers need­ed days, if not weeks, to catch up with orders.

“Of course, Black Fri­day is great news for pack­ag­ing firms as demand for our pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als goes through the roof. But many retail­ers real­ly strug­gle to suf­fi­cient­ly pro­tect goods for ship­ping at the same time as achiev­ing nec­es­sary through­put speeds at peak times,” he says.

Fast packing

Dynasafe, Test Valley’s flag­ship prod­uct, rep­re­sents an inno­v­a­tive response to e‑retailers’ demand dilem­ma. The pack­ing sys­tem revolves around the use of a low-slip, flex­i­ble film that eas­i­ly accom­mo­dates a wide range of dif­fer­ent­ly shaped frag­ile prod­ucts. Whether it’s a glass bot­tle or a smart­phone, the prod­uct is packed with zero fuss.

Adding to the effi­cien­cy of the process is the reduced require­ment for “void fill” and oth­er pro­tec­tive pack­ing mate­r­i­al. Test Val­ley has also designed a mod­u­lar pack­ag­ing sys­tem, which allows for prod­ucts such as chi­naware to be safe­ly seg­re­gat­ed – but, again, all with a min­i­mum of addi­tion­al labour and time.

Fast and easy unpack­ing is also fac­tored into Dynasafe’s design. Test Val­ley pri­ori­tis­es sim­plic­i­ty of its reten­tion box­es to avoid prob­lems that con­sumers often face when it comes to open­ing pack­ag­ing. Because Dynasafe con­tains no void fill or oth­er pack­ing mate­ri­als, it is easy to recy­cle as well.

Sustainability

More online pur­chas­ing means more busi­ness for a pack­ag­ing firm such as Test Val­ley. But it also means more card­board and plas­tic, and there­fore high­er envi­ron­men­tal impacts.

“We take envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty very seri­ous­ly,” says Mr Steed­man. “Not only do we feel min­imis­ing resource use is the right thing to do, but we’re find­ing that demon­strat­ing our ‘green’ cre­den­tials is pro­vid­ing us with an edge in today’s mar­ket.”

With that in mind, the com­pa­ny has devel­oped Dynasafe using envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly cor­ru­gat­ed card­board that con­tains 70 per cent recy­cled con­tent and uses starch-based glues that are low in tox­i­c­i­ty.

Anoth­er of the upsides of Test Valley’s reten­tion pack­ag­ing designs is the film tech­nol­o­gy they use. This offers an alter­na­tive to foam and poly­styrene inserts, which add huge­ly to the envi­ron­men­tal foot­print of con­ven­tion­al pack­ag­ing.

Recycling

Test Valley’s com­mit­ment to using recy­cled mate­ri­als makes sense. Paper pack­ag­ing can be recy­cled up to sev­en or eight times, while recy­cled paper requires 70 per cent less ener­gy than paper made from raw mate­ri­als. The firm is now in the final stages of devel­op­ing a new ultra-com­pact machine to pro­duce pro­tec­tive void-fill from recy­cled paper rather than plas­tic-based alter­na­tives.

Recy­cling leg­is­la­tion pos­es a poten­tial obsta­cle for many pack­ag­ing firms, how­ev­er. Under new reg­u­la­tions passed in 2014, cor­ru­gat­ed board can have no more than 1.5 per cent “unwant­ed” con­tent by weight if it is to be recy­cled in its entire­ty. Dynasafe packs meet these cri­te­ria. Test Val­ley is cur­rent­ly inno­vat­ing with new­er mate­ri­als, ensur­ing its pack­ag­ing con­tin­ues under this thresh­old into the future.

“We expect Dynasafe will be chang­ing the future of pack­ag­ing for online ful­fil­ment com­pa­nies. For the first time, reten­tion pack­ag­ing with all its ben­e­fits will be acces­si­ble to online retail­ers at a cost com­pa­ra­ble to tra­di­tion­al forms of pack­ag­ing,” says Mr Steed­man.

With Black Fri­day grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty year on year, Test Val­ley will have no short­age of oppor­tu­ni­ty to put its tech­nol­o­gy to the test.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.testvalleypkg.co.uk

Fast packing

Sustainability

Recycling