It’s often quite hard to see the added value in transit packaging – all the cardboard boxes or cartons, tape and ‘void fill’ that carry a consumer’s purchases to the doorstep or parcel locker. However, it’s essential for creating a safe unit load – often for multiple items – and to protect goods from damage in transit. In addition, how a package is received – how it is prepared and presented – is fundamental to protecting, or building, brand image.
There seems to be a significant number of e-commerce businesses that still take a simplistic approach to packaging – perhaps using a range of average box sizes and packing manually across numerous workstations. This tends to be highly labor intensive, slow and wasteful, and critically, exposes the business to the impact of rises in the cost of materials, labor and transportation.
Labor issues
Labor isn’t getting any cheaper either and in many operations packing is still largely a manual process. The national living wage in the UK went up to £11.44 (US$14.60) per hour in April, which significantly adds to costs – not to mention the difficulty in finding available labor, especially at peak periods. According to Totaljobs, the average distribution center salary (including supervisory roles, and with some large regional variation) is £28,363 (US$36,202).
Transportation too is dearer – increasing fuel and driver costs of course, but also other elements such as insurance premiums. And not all these increases have been passed through yet – 2023 was a record year for insolvencies among haulers and carriers as the number of parcels being dispatched fell back from its Covid-19 peak. According to Pitney Bowes, volumes fell by 5% to ‘just’ 5.1 billion in 2022. However, the company forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 1% per annum to 2028 as e-commerce continues to grow.
Maximizing the cube of the trailer or van would go a long way to shaving costs in the last mile. We can’t eliminate the need for transit packaging, but we certainly can limit the costs involved, and ‘rightsizing’ packaging offers significant savings. Sparck Technologies’ Impack and Everest ranges of automated packing lines help address all these cost areas.
Rightsizing boxes
This is achieved through advanced 3D scanning technology that measures the volume of the items in an order and calculates the optimum shape and size of box required, which is then automatically cut from the raw material fanfold, creased, erected, sealed, checkweighed and labeled. Rightsizing parcels can reduce the consumption of card by 30% or more, as well as eliminate the need for void fill.
When it comes to labor, throughput of up to 1,100 orders an hour can be achieved with just one or two operators, replacing up to 20 workers on purely manual packing stations. Automation also alleviates the stress and strain of trying to find suitable, available labor – a particular problem at peak periods.
And on transportation costs, smaller packages increase the earning efficiency of vehicles, especially of vans and cars in the last mile. Internal transportation in the warehouse is also made more efficient as fewer totes and cages need to be moved around for a given number of orders. To the extent that rightsizing boxes reduces the number of vehicles to be loaded, this also reduces congestion around loading bays and makes it easier to meet ever-tighter intervals between cutoff and dispatch.
Rightsize boxing technology presents an obvious way forward for e-commerce businesses looking to rein in the rising costs of transit packaging. The same technology helps build in capacity for natural growth in the business and adds flexibility for tackling busy seasonal peaks. Automated rightsize boxing technology offers the full package.
This article was originally published in the June 2024 issue of Parcel and Postal Technology International.
