DS Smith has opened its first two UK PackRight Centres, giving customers the opportunity to work with packaging experts to design and build new or improved packaging prototypes.
With collaboration at their heart, the PackRight Centres provide customers with the opportunity to be more hands on with the packaging process, tapping into DS Smith’s extensive industry insight and accessing the latest industry thinking.
At the Centres, which have opened in Featherstone (Yorkshire) and Hinckley (Leicestershire), DS Smith’s packaging strategists come together with customers, including team members from marketing, branding, technology and research and development departments, to brainstorm ideas and come up with solutions that address their packaging and supply chain challenges.
During the course of a workshop at a PackRight Centre, customers start by putting their packaging requirements into context by learning about broader trends within the packaging industry and sharing their vision, ideas and concerns on everything from the branding and look of the packaging, to transportation in the supply chain and recyclability.
Working together, DS Smith and its customers then undertake a series of hands-on workshops to explore solutions in the design studio. Using a range of technology from sketching boards to visualisation software, customers see their design aspirations becoming a reality. At the end of the day, customers take away digitally printed prototypes, giving them a tangible product that could be brought to market.
Chris Curtis, Senior Shopping Marketing Manager at Britvic, said, “Our visit to the PackRight Centre at Featherstone provided us the opportunity to think differently about how we approach and design packaging for our brands. Covering everything from supply chain to in-store, the experts in the DS Smith team facilitated our session over the course of two days, utilising a suite of technology to achieve tangible outputs that we could take back to our project team and stakeholders. Using the PackRight facilities and expertise available at DS Smith has set the benchmark for how we collaborate as a business and with our partners going forward”.
Mick Thornton, Sales and Marketing Director of DS Smith’s UK Packaging Division, said, “PackRight is an approach that we established to bring the technical and creative elements of the packaging process together to develop innovative packaging solutions for every ‘moment of truth’ in a customer’s supply chain.
“The PackRight approach is the quality assurance that we use to ensure that we produce world-class design and packaging solutions, but the involvement of different representatives from a customer’s organisation right at the start is what really makes a difference. It means that everyone is fully bought into the concept and understands how an efficient, competitive packaging solution will ultimately help businesses achieve increased sales, reduce costs and manage risk.”
