In recent his­tory, many busi­nesses have embraced ways to reduce pri­mary, or end-user, pack­ag­ing. By reduc­ing the pack­ag­ing that sur­rounds the prod­uct itself, com­pa­nies have reduced the amount of energy and waste that is expended. Now, busi­nesses are also con­sid­er­ing ways to reduce the pack­ag­ing they use for trans­port­ing their prod­ucts. The most cost-effective and impact­ful way to achieve this objec­tive is reusable trans­port packaging.

The Reusable Pack­ag­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (RPA) defines reusable pack­ag­ing as pal­lets, con­tain­ers and dun­nage designed for reuse within a sup­ply chain. These items are con­structed for mul­ti­ple trips and extended life. Due to their reusable nature, they offer a rapid return on invest­ment and a lower cost-per-trip than single-use pack­ag­ing prod­ucts. Addi­tion­ally, they can be effi­ciently stored, han­dled and dis­trib­uted through­out the sup­ply chain. Their value is quan­tifi­able and has been ver­i­fied in mul­ti­ple indus­tries and uses. Today, busi­nesses are look­ing at reusable pack­ag­ing as a solu­tion to help them reduce costs in the sup­ply chain as well as meet their sus­tain­abil­ity objectives.

Reusable pal­lets and con­tain­ers, typ­i­cally made of durable wood, steel, or vir­gin or recycled-content plas­tic, (resis­tant to chem­i­cals and mois­ture with good insu­lat­ing prop­er­ties), are designed for many years of use. . These sturdy, moisture-proof con­tain­ers are built to pro­tect prod­ucts, espe­cially in rough ship­ping environments.

Who uses reusable packaging?

A wide vari­ety of busi­nesses and indus­tries in man­u­fac­tur­ing, mate­ri­als han­dling, and stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion have dis­cov­ered the advan­tages of reusable trans­port pack­ag­ing. Here are some examples:

Man­u­fac­tur­ing

• Elec­tron­ics and com­puter man­u­fac­tur­ers and assemblers
• Auto­mo­tive parts manufacturers
• Auto­mo­tive assem­bly plants
• Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal manufacturers
• Many other types of manufacturers

Food and beverage

• Food and bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­ers and distributors
• Meat and poul­try pro­duc­ers, proces­sors and distributors
• Pro­duce grow­ers, field pro­cess­ing and distribution
• Gro­cery store sup­pli­ers of bak­ery, dairy, meat and produce
• Bak­ery and dairy deliveries
• Candy and choco­late manufacturers

Retail and con­sumer prod­uct distribution

• Depart­ment store chains
• Super­stores and club stores
• Retail phar­ma­cies
• Mag­a­zine and book distributors
• Fast-food retail­ers
• Restau­rant chains and suppliers
• Food ser­vice companies
• Air­line caterers
• Auto parts retailers

Sev­eral areas through­out the sup­ply chain can ben­e­fit from reusable trans­port pack­ag­ing, including:

· Inbound freight: Raw mate­ri­als or sub­com­po­nents shipped to a pro­cess­ing or assem­bly plant, such as shock absorbers shipped to an auto­mo­tive assem­bly plant, or flour, spices, or other ingre­di­ents shipped to a large-scale bakery.

· In-plant or inter­plant work in process: Goods moved between assem­bly or pro­cess­ing areas within an indi­vid­ual plant or shipped between plants within the same company.

· Fin­ished goods: Ship­ment of fin­ished goods to users either directly or through dis­tri­b­u­tion networks.

· Ser­vice parts: “After mar­ket” or repair parts sent to ser­vice cen­ters, deal­ers or dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters from man­u­fac­tur­ing plants.

Pal­let and con­tainer pooling

Closed-loop sys­tems are ideal for reusable trans­port pack­ag­ing. Reusable con­tain­ers and pal­lets flow through the sys­tem and return empty to their orig­i­nal start­ing point (reverse logis­tics) to begin the entire process again. Sup­port­ing the reverse logis­tics requires processes, resources and an infra­struc­ture to track, retrieve and clean reusable con­tain­ers and then deliver them to the point of ori­gin for reuse. Some com­pa­nies cre­ate the infra­struc­ture and man­age the process them­selves. Oth­ers choose to out­source the logis­tics. With pal­let and con­tainer pool­ing, com­pa­nies out­source the logis­tics of pal­let and/or con­tainer man­age­ment to a third-party pool­ing man­age­ment ser­vice. These ser­vices can include pool­ing, logis­tics, clean­ing and asset track­ing. The pal­lets and/or con­tain­ers are deliv­ered to the com­pa­nies; prod­ucts are shipped through the sup­ply chain; then a rental ser­vice picks up the empty pal­lets and/or con­tain­ers and returns them to ser­vice cen­ters for inspec­tion and repair. Pool­ing prod­ucts are typ­i­cally made of high-quality, durable wood, metal, or plastic.

Open-loop ship­ping sys­tems often require the assis­tance of a third-party pool­ing man­age­ment com­pany to accom­plish the more com­plex return of empty trans­port pack­ag­ing. For exam­ple, reusable con­tain­ers may be shipped from one or many loca­tions to var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions. A pool­ing man­age­ment com­pany sets up a pool­ing net­work to facil­i­tate the return of empty reusable trans­port pack­ag­ing. The pool­ing man­age­ment com­pany may pro­vide var­i­ous ser­vices such as sup­ply, col­lec­tion, clean­ing, repair and track­ing of reusable trans­port pack­ag­ing. An effec­tive sys­tem can min­i­mize loss and opti­mize sup­ply chain efficiency.

In these reusable appli­ca­tions the cap­i­tal uti­liza­tion effect is high allow­ing end users to gain the ben­e­fits of reuse while using their cap­i­tal for core busi­ness activ­i­ties. The RPA has sev­eral mem­bers who own and rent or pool their reusable assets.

A recent devel­op­ment in the area of track­ing is the find­ing that RFID tags designed for sin­gle use can be used for mul­ti­ple trips with­out any dete­ri­o­ra­tion in per­for­mance. The RPA spon­sored the ground­break­ing study that included an exten­sive field trial that lasted over a year. The par­tic­i­pants included Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Fron­tera Pro­duce, Stemilt, Tan­imura and Antle, Georgia-Pacific, IFCO SYSTEMS N.A.,ORBIS, Alien Tech­nol­ogy; Avery Den­ni­son, Imp­inj, UPM Raflatac, Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity School of Pack­ag­ing, The Kennedy Group, Cal­i­for­nia State Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­sity, QLM Con­sult­ing and the RPA. The com­pat­i­bil­ity of RFID tech­nol­ogy with reusable con­tain­ers brings sub­stan­tial added ben­e­fits to the already proven eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal advan­tages of reusable pack­ag­ing sys­tems. By com­bin­ing RFID tech­nol­ogy with reusable con­tain­ers, indus­tries have gained the abil­ity to bet­ter track their prod­uct and their con­tain­ers as they move through the sup­ply chain. The com­plete find­ings of the study can be found on the RPA web­site (www.choosereusables.com).

The cur­rent eco­nomic cli­mate con­tin­ues to drive busi­nesses to reduce costs wher­ever pos­si­ble. At the same time, there is a global aware­ness that busi­nesses must truly change their prac­tices that deplete the earth’s resources. These two forces are result­ing in more busi­nesses adopt­ing reusable pack­ag­ing, both as a solu­tion to decrease costs and to drive sup­ply chain sus­tain­abil­ity. Stay tuned for the next two arti­cles in this series.