August 5, 2016
Mass production revolutionized the world in the last century, but it was mass distribution that made it possible. Without the packaging and logistics to convey products from farms and factories to retailers and homes, none of the innovation in mass production of consumer products and processed food would have seen the light of day.
Since the beginning of this century, a new purchasing and delivery model has begun to challenge much of the orthodoxy of mass production and distribution. Online, mobile, and other forms of untethered shopping are enabling a new level of individuality and customization. No longer can we safely assume that products produced in one location will travel in homogeneous groups of palletized shipments until eventually reaching a highly standardized and nearly uniform point of sale. Instead, consumers are increasingly demanding direct-to-home distribution, often over very long distances, challenging almost everything we have developed in the packaging industry in terms of uniformity, consistency, and repeatability.
In this environment, corrugated packaging is playing a massively important role. Not too many years ago, conventional wisdom suggested that the corrugated packaging industry would be under increasing pressure as large consumer products companies and retailers moved toward closed-loop systems that favored two-way crates, reusable totes, and other corrugated substitutes. While those trends continue, the explosion of in-home delivery has resulted in unprecedented shipments of corrugated boxes—filled with everything from apparel to food to cleaning supplies—to individual consumers. At any given moment, my garage might look like moving day, given the corrugated boxes that have arrived since our last trip to the recycler.
With all of the innovation taking place in how best to serve consumers over the last mile of a product’s logistics cycle, it is a safe bet that corrugated will remain a preferred solution and far more practical than other methods under consideration. Wal-Mart’s recent announcement that it is exploring ways to use ride-sharing services for home delivery only reinforces the company’s need for one-way-shipping packaging that will protect shipments of nonstandard products in nonstandard vehicles.
Don’t Miss Ron Sasine’s Keynote Session at SuperCorrExpo®!
Who: Ron Sasine, principal, Hudson Windsor LLC
Ron Sasine served as senior director of packaging for Wal-Mart from 2009 to 2015, where he was responsible for packaging design, execution, and sourcing for the company’s largest global brands. He created a new visual look for more than 7,000 items, bringing a national brand design standard to the Great Value, Spring Valley, Equate Beauty, and Parents’ Choice brands. He also created first-of-its-kind supply chain visibility for the global packaging market and Wal-Mart’s more than 5,000 packaging providers. He led Wal-Mart’s sustainable packaging initiative, achieving a 9 percent reduction in greenhouse gas impact.
Prior to joining Wal-Mart, Sasine was a marketing and manufacturing executive with MeadWestvaco (now WestRock). He directed international sales integration, business development, and design, and he served seven years as an expatriate leading mergers and acquisitions and marketing for MeadWestvaco’s packaging operations in Brazil and Latin America.
Sasine is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and of Brigham Young University. In addition, he recently served as an adjunct professor at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. He is a frequent commentator on the packaging industry and has been published in The New York Times, on CNBC, and in USA Today.
What: Sasine’s keynote speech will discuss big-box retail, e-commerce, the packaging supply chain, and key industry trends.
Retail markets around the world are in transition. Has the era of big-box retailers finally come to an end? Will e-commerce change the way consumers consume and suppliers supply? How will the packaging supply chain adapt to the coming evolution in products, markets, and shopping? All these questions and more will be answered during this keynote address!
Where: The 2016 SuperCorrExpo®, October 17–20, Orlando, Fla.
When: Tuesday, October 18, General Session II, 9:30–10:15 a.m.
Packaging needs to do three things: It needs to convey, it needs to communicate, and it needs to convince. In our modern society, most of what we consume comes from a much larger travel radius than ever before. So, it’s critical that packaging can convey a product from farm, field, and factory through a distribution network to a point of sale and eventually to a consumer’s home. That “convey” is critical.
Throughout that process, a package needs to “communicate” to the channel partners about what it is, where it belongs, how it needs to be shipped or treated, and what its eventual destination is. Those channel partners can be trucking companies, distribution centers, or FedEx and UPS. So, that’s the communicate part.
Then eventually, it’s got to “convince” the consumer to buy the product, and then it has to continually convince the consumer, in the home, to consume the product and eventually go back for a repurchase.
From a sustainability point of view,the corrugated industry’s chief raw material is essentially all naturally derived, is readily reusable, and sourced from renewable materials. The pine trees that form the basis of the corrugated supply network are hardy and great at sequestering carbon. The growth of those pine trees that foster and form the foundation of the corrugated industry is a huge success story.
On the other hand, it’s one of the most readily recycled and most broadly collected and recovered materials in the recycling industry today. Corrugated boxes generally use anywhere from 40 to 100 percent recycled materials, so it’s a great story in terms of where it originates. And it’s an even more outstanding story in terms of the recycling process that has been well developed over the years to create reuse and recovery of the underlying fiber.
It’s great to be participating in SuperCorrExpo® this fall, and I look forward to meeting you in Orlando.
Ron Sasine is principal at Hudson Windsor LLC and a SuperCorrExpo® 2016 keynote speaker.
