In the build up to the busiest online shopping day of the year, DS Smith has published the results of a survey on ecommerce packaging.
This says that effectively poor packaging equates to damaged goods and a risk to a brand’s carefully curated reputation. One in four consumers say that they have received at least one damaged home delivered item while more than 80% of retailers admit that this is an issue and results in a damages bill of £2.5 billion this year, up from £2.3 billion last year. Retailers reckon to spend £7,646 rush per month drilling with damaged packaging while the value of items needing to be replaced amounts to an average of £82.30 which when spread over the number of damaged packaging, amounts to £2.5 billion.
The answer comes with better packaging design, through the choice of the appropriate materials and a carefully designed box rather than a standard box stuffed with fill. The size of the issue appears huge.
The survey of more than 2,000 people says that 54% plan a Black Friday purchase despite 23% having already received a damaged item this year. And that causes 51% to be critical of the company they are purchasing from.
The findings are being used by the corrugated packaging supplier to highlight what its innovation centre in Rugby can do. Designers are capable of creating different styles of packaging intended to provide greater levels of protection.
It has created a testing process comprising five different machines to assess ecommerce packaging. It calls this Discs for Drop, Impact, Shake, Crush, Shock.
Head of design & innovation Ashwin Moorthy says: “The key to solving this challenge is great design, rigorous testing and constant innovation. We work with some of the biggest brands in the world, and we know how harmful damages can be for both customers and retailers. Using our unique robotics based testing, we recreate the journey of parcels from the warehouse to your house, so we can put packaging through its paces and then do everything we can to help protect what’s inside.
“Our research and development teams have found that, through clever design, there are ways to not only limit damage but use less material, while ensuring the packaging remains readily recyclable and that the materials are kept in use for as long as possible”.
DS Smith achieves a 14-day turnaround from boxes that are collected for recycling into new packaging. New box design eschews the use of plastics, seeks out new materials and fibres and is intended to cut the carbon impact of all packaging as part of support for a circular economy.
