DS Smith North America launches sustainable packaging workshop

The North American business of London-based paper and packaging company DS Smith has launched a collaborative packaging workshop called PackRight 2.0, an experience meant to help businesses in fast-moving consumer goods, e-commerce and others innovate and enhance the sustainability of their packaging using DS Smith’s Circular Design Metrics.

The workshops are hosted at DS Smith’s PackRight Centers in Reading, Pennsylvania, and Lebanon, Indiana, and bring the company’s designers and engineers together with customers to try to develop design solutions that boost packaging efficiency, effectiveness, appeal and sustainability.

According to DS Smith, the new workshops are the first in the U.S. packaging and design space to employ advanced visual content platform solutions from French collaboration tech startup Klaxoon, and the company says the workshops reduce the time, effort and expense required to create new packaging that still meets brands’ growing circularity needs.

The process includes:

• Initial audit. The process begins with an initial site visit and audit of a customer’s present packaging supply chain. The supply chain audit provides insights for the “path of innovation” required for a redesign that can boost the value, efficiency and sustainability of a customer’s packaging.
• Collaboration and brainstorming. Following the audit, DS Smith PackRight Center specialists conduct a workshop using digital collaboration tools in an effort to enhance brainstorming and teamwork between DS Smith and its client teams. The platform combines whiteboard and videoconferencing, allowing session leaders to drive interactive sessions with live questions, voting, word clouds and additional tools to get participant feedback.
• Rating and comparing circularity. During the Circular Design Metrics analysis, DS Smith designers and engineers help brands rate and compare the circularity of packaging designs across eight indicators: carbon footprint, design for reuse, supply chain optimization, recyclability, planet safety, material utilization, renewable source and recycled content.
• Rapid prototyping and review. Workshop leaders then create prototypes on demand using the centers’ digital printing and cutting equipment, then evaluate the performance of those prototypes on in-house testing equipment. Cameras capture print samples for collaborative review and analysis and a DS Smith Value Tool analysis quantifies the benefits customers gain by calculating total cost of ownership for packaging designs.

“Our PackRight Centers integrate circularity with design, improving the process needed to bring inspiration from the drawing board to the factory floor,” says Steven Rose, managing director of packaging at DS Smith North America. “No longer just for in-person collaboration, our new PackRight design workshops enable all customers interested in reducing their environmental impact to take advantage of DS Smith’s design and engineering expertise and our proven Circular Design Metrics process.”

The company says the results from working at its PackRight Centers help brands develop innovative and sustainable packaging designs, creating more effective, circular packaging solutions that improve supply cycle effectiveness, increase sales and manage risk.

DS Smith cites some examples of the PackRight Centers in action, including helping a virtual team from a South American food brand establish new sustainability targets as well as working with an equipment manufacturer on enhancements to fiber-based beverage packaging solutions.