PREAMBLE
In recent times, the packaging industry has grown steadily in CAGR surpassing its previous record each year, and evolving from a billion dollar market to about a trillion dollar market potential. This sucess have translated to every sector of the packaging industry, most notably, the tertiary packaging space, otherwise known as transport packaging or protective transit packaging.
According to a new research by Smithers Pira, the global value of protective transit packaging products and systems totalled $112.3 billion in 2016, and is forecast to grow to $139.4 billion in 2022.
Beyond this mouth-watering opportunity, surging trade activities along with robust demand from end-use industries have made the transit packaging management complex. This has further resulted into introduction and rapid adoption of efficient fleet management for enabling management of tracking and cleaning containers, fleet sizes, and maintenance activities, in order to offer safe and effective transportation of goods
TRANSIT PACKAGING
Also known as Protective transit packaging, is an integral part of packaging that deals with the safety and efficient transportation of goods and services from the factory to the retail floor, the commercial worksite, or the e-commerce customer’s doorstep.
The sector's market value has surged overtime, however despite the positive future for this marketplace, the protective transit packaging marketplace faces some significant issues and challenges. Industry participants are responding aggressively to many of these challenges, while others present significant opportunities for developing new protective transit packaging products and systems.
Increasing emphasis on safety of products during transportation has led to development and adoption of corrugated boxes in transit packaging, as they facilitate recycling and are sustainable for the environment. Environmental issues have played a fundamental role in the selection, product design, and business practices associated with transit packaging.
A CONCISE LOOK AT THE GLOBAL TRANSIT PACKAGING MARKET
According to Future Market Insights forecast, between 2017 and 2026 over US$ 200,000 Mn worth of transit packaging are poised to be sold worldwide.
Globally, large retailers now demand for less wasteful, more efficient packaging, and their motivation for employing “eco friendly” packaging materials rows in tandem with environmental sensitivities of companies driving the marketplace for transit packaging.
European Transit Packaging Market
Europe remains a fast-expanding Market for Transit Packaging with Robust production activities across various industries which have resulted into huge adoption of transit packaging solutions, with food and beverage prevailing as the largest application area.
Other factors including surging international trade, industrialization, and urbanization will further propel demand for transit packaging in Europe. Europe is anticipated to remain fast-expanding as well as become most remunerative market for transit packaging by 2026-end.
The rapid growth of e-commerce sales and distribution channels during the early 2010s is revolutionising the retail marketplace. Among the 28 EU countries, around 8% of consumer purchases in 2016 were via e-commerce channels.
IMPACTS OF E-COMMERCE ON TRANSIT PACKAGING
While continued rapid growth of e-commerce will be driven by the convenience it represents to buyers, it can impact protective transit packaging markets in at least four important ways:
•Increasing demand for secondary and transit packaging
The pick–and-pack e-commerce methodology employs an additional cycle of secondary packaging and load unitisation, consuming an additional cycle of secondary and protective transit packaging materials. Suppliers of corrugated cartons, bubble wrap and small inflatable air pillows, and loose-fill packing peanuts, will continue to benefit in increased sales from this trend.
•Additional distribution channel costs
In return for the convenience of online ordering and home delivery, consumers and their e-commerce suppliers incur substantial extra shipping, handling, and delivery costs. While many of these additional cost elements are intrinsic to the longer and more complex e-commerce distribution channels, minimising these logistics-related costs is a major goal of e-commerce participants.
•Distribution channel inefficiencies
Reducing the amount of operator time spent in consolidating and packing the unique set of items that constitute each order is a priority of e-commerce order fulfillment centers. Orders are commonly packed in larger-than-necessary cartons and stuffed with bubble wrap or loose-fill packing. This non-optimum secondary packaging leads to non-optimum unitised loads. As a result, shippers and consumers sustain extra costs in the transportation and logistics system.
•Recovery of packaging materials
An important consequence of this increasing demand for secondary and protective transit packaging materials is the large increase in the amount of packaging materials that must be disposed of at the end user’s location. This problem is abundantly clear to consumers who regularly purchase through e-commerce channels.
•Some of the environment-related trends and concerns that will impact the suppliers and users of protective transit packaging materials over the next five years include:
-Innovative “greener” protective transit packaging products and systems that take advantage of environmentally friendly raw materials and encourage the recycling of waste transit packaging materials
-“Closed-loop” logistics management systems to facilitate the efficient recovery and reuse of packaging components such as pallets and drums
-More extensive use of recovery and recycle systems of the sort that have been successful in corrugated carton markets
-Reducing the amount, weight, and volume of transit packaging material, therefore reducing transportation fuel consumption
TOWARDS EFFICIENT TRANSIT PACKAGING:
This precise article, has gone far to explain the positives which mordern technology will bring to the transit packaging industry. Some of them include:
•Planning transport routes and collaborating with other companies along “green corridors” and ensuring trucks are full in both directions.
•Offering “green shipping” options that use cleaner, but slower, transport modes such as ocean and rail and reducing truck and air miles.
•Reducing processing errors, which result in using more energy-intensive transport to meet delivery windows and reducing packaging waste by optimizing carton size to the item being shipped
AUTOMATING THE TRANSIT PACKAGING DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL
Traditionally, shipping, warehousing, and handling have been labour-intensive operations - heavy on personnel costs and on potential for accident, injury, and product damage. Most operations have traditionally been done by work crews or individual workers.
Most state-of-the-art-systems combine robotics with remote sensing and position detection, telemetry, and integrated warehouse management software and computer systems- E-commerce fulfillment hubs, in particular, have been aggressive in developing and implementing warehouse and logistics automation systems. Warehouse and logistics automation will present major issues and open significant opportunities to transit packaging materials suppliers in the following ways:
•Packaging for floor space and volume efficiency - robots and automated systems may allow significant reduction in the warehouse floor space.
•Ability to handle smart packaging systems, with item-level tracking using RFID or similar systems.
•The use of blockchain for tracking and Standardising protective transit packaging products and systems.
Open Packaging Network is disrupting the packaging industry with world's first decentralized marketplace for sellers, buyers, validators, delivery agents, suppliers and other ecosystem participants.
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