DS Smith has opened its first PackRight Centre in Switzerland, located at the group’s Oftringen site. Overall, this is already the 27th PackRight Centre in the company’s European network. Working in collaboration with customers, DS Smith PackRight Centres develop display and packaging concepts that considerably reduce time-to-market and significantly help customers to increase sales and lower their costs.
“Our customers in Switzerland are now also able to benefit from the concept which is pretty special in our industry,” said Bernd Dilger, General Manager of the DS Smith location in Oftringen, Switzerland, during the opening ceremony. “In our newly designed rooms, we work together with our customers’ contact persons from various areas, for example, from marketing, purchasing, development and production, to find the optimum display and packaging solution. In this process, we precisely analyse the particular supply cycle of the product. As a result, we get solutions that perfectly match the requirements of our customers and therefore deliver real added value.”
In addition to the employees and customers, the management was also pleased to welcome Julius Fischer, the mayor of Oftringen, to the official opening of the newly designed facility. After the opening ceremony, the guests present had the opportunity to get a first impression of the new facilities and the concept behind them. The PackRight Centre concept comprises a meet & great area, a meeting space and the so-called collaboration and breakout area. Here, concrete and viable solutions are developed with the help of state-of-the-art technology and various design and creative tools. Direct access to the design makes it possible to create samples directly during the meeting, which can then be further discussed. At the end of the workshop day, there is a concrete solution.
“Even before the official opening we had our first customer workshops. The results of these workshops exceeded all expectations,” emphasised Dilger. “The interdisciplinary teams take account of all aspects of the supply cycle, and our customers save valuable time for internal coordination, as all important contacts are involved in the development of the solution. This shortens time-to-market considerably. In addition, the DS Smith designers contribute the know-how of the entire DS Smith Group, consumer and retail insights, as well as knowledge of the latest trends. All these things become part of a defined development process. The result is an optimal display or packaging solution, which our customers can take along as a sample on the same day.”
Depending on the topic, the customer workshops take between half a day and a whole day – time that is well spent. “With our tools, we can show our customers what they can achieve with the right packaging or the right display,” emphasises Per Frederiksen, Managing Director of the region of Germany & Switzerland. “As a strategic partner, we therefore look at the entire process and unveil the value creation potentials for our customers. The feedback from our customers in the already opened PackRight Centres is outstanding. This has confirmed us that we are on the right track with our concept.”
DS Smith will open another PackRight Centre in Germany in the coming weeks.
