The Skinny On Packaging: How Space-Efficient Materials Are Helping Companies Cut Costs

By Steve Schultz, Sealed Air Corporation Director of Sales and Marketing for Korrvu® Packaging

Is your protective packaging material big and bulky? If you work in a rapidly expanding company where space is at a premium or in a region of the country where warehouse space is especially expensive, skinny or space-efficient packaging provides measurable benefits.

Skinny packaging is compact and space-efficient. It packs a lot of protection into a little container. How thin is it? Some protective packaging materials on the market today are 80 - 85 percent more compact than traditional materials like pre-formed polyurethane or polystyrene cushions. That means a company gains the same protection using up to 85 percent less material. With really space-efficient protective packaging, a company can store five times more material in the same area once occupied by bulky old fashioned materials.

Certain skinny packaging materials are versatile enough to create "universal" packs that protect a wide variety of products. By reducing the number of packaging designs on hand, companies can save additional space.

One example of extremely space-efficient protective packaging is Sealed Air Corp.'s Korrvu® suspension and retention packaging. Suspension packaging entraps products in the air space of a shipping container between two layers of highly resilient low-slip transparent film. The retention pack holds products securely within a proprietary retention frame.

For businesses that operate on "Just-in-Time" principles, space-efficient packaging facilitates stacking enough material at the packaging station to meet packaging goals without storing large and bulky inventory. It enables companies to literally do more with less.

Skinny packaging is also effective when packaging is done in work cells or individual stations. It enables materials to be stored on-hand for immediate use and places fewer constraints on the number of stations that can be squeezed into limited space.

By reducing the amount of storage space and material handling that protective packaging requires, skinny packaging helps companies keep control over fixed costs.By reducing the amount of storage space and material handling that protective packaging requires, skinny packaging helps companies keep control over fixed costs.

Tighter inventory control is another advantage. Space-efficient packaging offers tighter control over how often the material is turned over. Because skinny packs require less space than fat materials, the company can decide how many packs it wants to store, as opposed to how many it has the ability to store.

The environment also benefits from space-efficient packaging. The volume of waste going into landfills is dramatically reduced. Additionally, fewer tractor trailers are needed to transport the packaging materials. Often, the finished pack, with the product in place, is smaller or more space-efficient too, and that keeps additional trucks off the road. Some space-efficient packaging is 100 percent curbside recyclable, so it never goes to waste.

How do you know if skinny packaging is right for you? Storing packaging materials at a secondary location is a key symptom. If you are stockpiling materials in an off-site warehouse or remote location, you probably need a more space-efficient product.

Expending a lot of labor on moving materials around is another symptom. Frequently reordering protective packaging may mean that you need to be able to keep more units on site. If packaging is ever lost or becomes obsolete, that indicates a problem too.

Look around. If you see pallet after pallet of material, you need a skinnier protective packaging product.

The first step to finding space-efficient protective packaging is to work with a company that will learn your business and can understand your goals. Your packaging partner should understand the complete impact of packaging on your company's operations. Key questions to ask a sales representative are:

1. Are you willing to spent time on-site to understand my business needs and operating environment
2. Can you help me create a custom packaging design
3. Do you have a testing lab to ensure that the pack will provide adequate product protection
4. Can you provide data that demonstrates the package's effectiveness.

By reducing bulky protective packaging materials, companies also cut down storage, material handling costs and the volume of waste that goes into landfill. If your materials are a little too fat, skinny packaging could be right for you.