Custom-fit on-demand packaging induces cost and efficiency gains as well as sustainability wins. Paul Hamblin spoke to Chris More of Packsize.
A cardboard box is just a box, right? Yes, but only up to a point. The quest for greater efficiency in production, distribution and delivery of goods, and the ever-spiralling demands of e-commerce customers, in addition to increasingly strict sustainability legislation, have made packaging far more than an afterthought in the intralogistics challenge.
The growth of Packsize illustrates the point perfectly. Founded in 2002, the business quickly established a presence in both the United States and Europe, based on the premise of reducing packaging waste and driving process efficiency. Its core aim was to eliminate oversized packaging, and it achieved this through creating technology that cuts and folds corrugated material on-demand to produce a right-sized box for each order.
The industry loved it. After establishing its European operations in Herford, Germany, Packsize expanded through a network of hubs across the continent, and more recently, the business has strategically relocated its European headquarters to Amsterdam. Growth has accelerated further through the acquisition of Sparck Technologies in 2025, and now, the announcement in June of the planned purchase of Panotec’s packaging business in Italy underscores the company’s ambitions.
Chris More (pictured, below) is Sales Director for the UK and Ireland. He says: “Together, these developments give Packsize what we believe is an unmatched breadth of technologies for efficiently right-sizing packaging in three dimensions, both within Europe and potentially worldwide.”
Sizing Matters
So, what are the benefits that come from using right-sized boxing solutions? He expains: “Exact size boxing has a direct impact in saving costs, on people resource allocation, on processes and on environmental requirements and footprint. We’re using less material to make that box, we can therefore put more boxes on a truck, and that means we can put fewer trucks on the road. Right-sizing brings only advantages across the board.”
There appear to be significant opportunities for businesses to benefit from the technology, particularly in the ecommerce sector, but right-sizing as a concept is still relatively unknown. That means many businesses are still leaving significant potential untapped.
Right-sizing packaging in all three dimensions is still not widely understood. Many businesses are familiar with two-dimensional optimisation, which reduces the height of a standard box, while its length and width remain fixed. Although this can reduce some void space, three-dimensional optimisation creates a package around the exact size of its contents, delivering a significantly better fill rate, using less material and reducing both void space and the risk of product damage.
According to Packsize, across their solutions customers see average corrugated material savings of around 30%, package volume reductions of up to 40% while approximately 80% less void fill is used. Fully automated systems can also commonly deliver the equivalent output of around 20 manual packing stations, creating significant labour efficiencies. Although the company points out that these results vary depending on the customer’s products, order profile and their existing operation.
Packsize solutions are about machinery and have been since the beginning, offering an array of box-first and box-last solutions. With box-first, a right-sized box is produced before the products are packed into it; with box-last, the products are inducted onto a conveyor and the packaging is formed around them.
On Demand
Packsize offers both approaches through semi-automated and fully automated solutions to suit different products, order profiles and throughput requirements. The efficiency benefit is that the correct package dimensions can be received from the customer’s WMS or determined from the inducted products, removing the need for an operator to select from multiple pre-made box sizes and reducing manual decision-making throughout the packing process.
On-Demand packaging means what it says, including products that enhance the end-user ‘unboxing’ experience, such as personalised, printed boxes containing unique images or messages.
We can be very highly customised… There might be a run of 500 boxes, each with an individual print and all at different sizes. Or consider a 3PL client who might be running fulfilment for three clients in three sectors, such as beauty, hair and electronics goods – the template can be loaded into the machine to suit each customer… In some cases we have seen customers take the opportunity to boost revenue by printing customised ad’s or by providing an enhanced unboxing experience.
Packsize works with small, medium and large customer accounts. One SME client with a throughput of only 1200 parcels a day enabled the redistribution of eight people after adopting Packsize technology and is projected to make an ROI in two years (two to five years for ROI is typical, he says); larger clients in the UK include Smyths Toys and household names such as Boots.
Packsize supports both brownfield and greenfield projects. The company is highly proficient at integrating solutions into existing infrastructure and warehouse processes, and when engaging in a greenfield project, involving Packsize early on allows packaging to be considered as part of the overall system design – creating greater opportunities to optimise the complete material flow and overall efficiency of the operation.
