Every year, retail hits its most feverish point around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when a gamut of heavy product discounts and US megastore riots remind us of the horrors of unbridled modern capitalism. There were 1.39bn online retail visits in the UK during the seven days that have been dubbed Cyber Week between 19 and 25 November 2018 last year, according to insights agency Hitwise. The period saw Amazon’s (US:AMZN) share of the UK retail industry grow 3 per cent year on year to 26 per cent in 2018, placing it far ahead of the likes of Argos, eBay and John Lewis, its next biggest competitors. The story was similar for the rest of Amazon’s year. The retail giant’s total online net sales increased nearly 14 per cent between 2017 and 2018 to just shy of $123m (£96m), making up over half of its overall net income.
We are getting hooked on online deliveries. It follows that this is a lucrative time to be packaging them.
The flatscreen television is one symbol of Black Friday, with significant deals to be found. Last year, this writer spent £355 on a discounted 43-inch television. It arrived with a broken screen. Then, its replacement arrived with the same ailment. Both TVs were delivered wrapped in crumbling polystyrene and encased in flimsy cardboard.
With the rise of online shopping, retail is no longer a case of getting a product from A to B. In an e-commerce supply chain, there are now 10 times the number of ‘touch points’ a delivery may encounter on its transit from the seller to its owner, than in conventional retail. Packaging must therefore be designed to protect a product while in transit. But packaging is about more than merely encasing a product. Companies are juggling the need to innovate products and testing procedures for an online world with the global trend towards sustainable business – this involves greater focus on the use of paper. Whether the sustainability push has compromised the integrity of boxes merits scrutiny. Experts are adamant that it has not.
But if consumers are to continue buying online, they will need to be able to trust that their goods will arrive in one piece. Packaging must stand up to the needs of the modern consumer. My televisions were inadequately armoured for their perilous journeys. They never stood a chance.
Moving packaging into the 21st century
Of course, there are a number of possible reasons for a product’s demise, beyond how it is packaged. The product itself may have been structurally weak. It could have been badly treated along the way. “[Corrugated] cardboard is actually very very good at protecting things for transit,” DS Smith’s (SMDS) Alex Manisty argues. The packaging giant’s head of strategy thinks some e-commerce businesses are using “20th century technology” in packaging for a “21st century problem”.
Boxes can be tested for crush resistance, and DS Smith has innovated its own ‘DISCS’ process (Drop, Impact, Shock, Crush, Shake), a patented system consisting of five pieces of equipment, each replicating a part of the product journey in a bid to provide real-world testing. But it’s currently impossible to properly test the integrity of a box with no product within it. The current alternatives to corrugated packaging, such as plastic, bubble wrap, even wood, are unattractive to consumers, Mr Manisty adds. Getting a television to one’s door is more than about what it arrives in. Prudent supply chain management, and the way a product is packaged, must be seriously considered when delivering fragile products, he says.
Sustainability rules
It would be fair to say that plastic packaging was broadly accepted by consumers until November 2017, pre-David Attenborough’s ‘Blue Planet II’ programme. Viewers were shocked by footage of a pilot whale clasping its calf, which had been killed by plastic poisoning. The documentary prompted 88 per cent of viewers to change their behaviour in relation to plastic, according to research by supermarket chain Waitrose.
Packaging companies listened. DS Smith has agreed to sell its plastics division, training its focus on “fibre-based” (otherwise known as paper-based) packaging. Its peers have all made pledges on sustainability. But has the movement away from plastic compromised our ability to package goods properly? Might the TV have survived its delivery in a less environmentally-friendly box?
Arco Berkenbosch, vice president of innovation and development at Smurfit Kappa (SKG), is unconvinced, but recognises that “there’s a lot of pressure now on pushing the amount of materials used to the minimal limits”. Smurfit is pushing to reduce the amount of polystyrene used in its packaging. Its ‘bag-in-box’ innovation, which has yet to enter Europe, has been adopted by consumer goods giant Procter and Gamble for its detergent products. It achieves the twin aims of reducing both the risk of leakage and the use of plastic by 60 per cent.
Advances in packaging technologies
Packaging companies have been known to experiment with advanced materials. Zotefoams (ZTF), a materials technology company that specialises in the manufacture and sale of cross-linked block foams, uses its ‘MuCell’ technology to enhance the sustainability of plastics used in consumer packaging. MuCell works by injecting gas into plastics during the manufacturing process, in order to create micro-bubbles, and the end product subsequently uses between 15 and 20 per cent less material. Graphene pioneer Versarien (VRS), meanwhile, is currently exploring the ways the so-called ‘wonder material’ could help a US manufacturer enhance its “plastic packaging and transportation vessels” for volatile chemicals.
But Armand Schoonbrood, chief operating officer at Mondi’s (MNDI) corrugated packaging arm, argues that advanced materials aren’t a requirement when it comes to safely transporting fragile goods. “We find that custom-made bespoke solutions offer the highest protection possible for each product,” he adds. Corrugated packaging can also be twinned with wood to move fragile goods around. One of Mondi’s clients, a leading European car manufacturer, uses containers made from corrugated board with supporting wooden frames to transport delicate car parts.
Smurfit Kappa develops coatings and foams for its packaging, and also recently hosted an external design challenge that sought an alternative to the plastic stretch wrap used in pallets to provide stability during transport and storage. Both Smurfit and DS Smith cautioned, however, that the use of advanced materials can make it more challenging to recycle packaging. DS Smith is investigating the use of coatings that could help to waterproof paper, but Mr Manisty says that “wherever we can, we try to use paper on its own, or use coatings or other materials that don’t restrict the recyclability of the pack”. “Putting graphene and foam... into packs can increase the strength quite considerably,” he added. “But it might also make it very difficult for the product to be recycled at the end of its life.”
Mondi, which also develops coatings to help prevent scratches on products, says it has developed the strongest paper in the world, which can withstand the force of 15 spring mattresses.
