- Consumer & Luxury
- Article
Lightweighting for reduced costs and environmental impact
Packaging matters. For the consumer, for the environment and, most of all, for your brand. So, how do you turn packaging into a competitive edge? With a solution that optimizes packaging, reduces costs and lowers your environmental impact, your brand can reach a new level of sustainability. We call it lightweighting – the power to make more from less.
Strengthen your brand, reduce cost and improve your environmental footprint - all in one
Too often, products are unnecessarily overpackaged, which leads to increased cost and wastage. The goal of lightweighting is to use less material, without compromising the quality or product performance. By reducing package weight, you can save both material costs and improve your environmental footprint. These are some of the benefits your brand may enjoy by rethinking product packaging:
- Less raw material, less additives
- Leaner production
- Less energy consumed
- Less waste
- Savings in transport and warehousing requirements
- More sheets on each pallet
- More packaging from every ton of pulp
Making more from less – that's lightweighting
Switching to a packaging material with lower grammage, but higher strength and stiffness, will save you money from every shipment down to every last package and single sheet. Besides reduced weight, you get a packaging material that endures more machine processing, is tougher as well as more shapeable, and stays good-looking all the way to the store shelf. The result is a more appealing product (and brand) at a lower cost
Savings in figures
If you usually order 28 tonnes of 315 gsm (17.9 pt / 455 µm) cartonboard but switch to 290 gsm (15.9 pt / 405 µm) of a stronger product, this is the difference the reduction makes:
- 2.2 tonnes less raw material to buy.
- 8 fewer pallets to transport.
- 120 kg less waste to take care of.
That’s an 8% weight reduction. In reality the outcome is often even better, because in most cases a heavier and poorer board is replaced by a stronger lightweight board from Billerud. Up to 20% reduction is not unusual and the average is a good 10%.
Lightweighting support
Most packaging projects have a potential for lightweighting and will benefit from this innovation with a little help from clever structural design and optimisation. Our Carton Solutions team at Billerud has the right experience and expertise needed to create a sustainable and cost-effective lightweighting solution that suits you (and the consumers!) perfectly.