The Present and Future of Packaging

Not long ago, Core77's Rain Noe ordered a battery from Staples that was delivered to his home in a box that was way bigger than the battery enclosed inside.

It turns out that delivery was the unintended consequence of a decision by Staples, one that actually saves the company quite a lot of money, to both standardize the size of the corrugated (cardboard) packaging in which in ships goods to its online customers and to automate as much of the packaging operations at its fulfillment center as it can. A Core77 reader found a two minute-long video that describes how Staples fulfillment center packages the goods it ships.

So how did this choice by Staples lead to such a seemingly wasteful mismatch between the size of ordered good and the size of the packaging in which it was delivered? Rain explains:

… it appears that Staples has chosen the sizes of corrugated Z-fold most common to their order, with my tiny battery being an anomaly.

But that's not the end of the story. Packsize, the maker of the automated packaging equipment that Staples uses, recognizes the opportunity it has to benefit in the market from continuing to minimize the waste that results from shipping products to customers in oversize packages by better tailoring its on-demand packaging product line to produce “right-sized” boxes.

And that's the future of packaging. As for Packsize, the company often contracts with its customers to provide them its packaging machines at no cost, where its revenue comes from selling the Z-fold corrugated cardboard packing material used by the machines to the companies that acquire them. Or as Rain notes:

It looks like the razor-and-handle business model works well here.

Speaking of which, if you weren't already familiar with the BBC's 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy series of podcasts, here are links to a few of its episodes that directly overlap with the modern business of packing and shipping:

• Shipping Container
• Disposable Razor
• Billy Bookcase