How a simple material swap gave a legacy carton the same performance, with a fraction of the plastic.
The client’s legacy folding carton used a polyethylene window film as a dust cover. They wanted to reduce their plastic usage without giving up the dust-cover protection their customers expected — and ideally, have a stronger sustainability story to share with end users.
SPBCo invested the R&D time, resources, and additional die tooling needed to develop a folding carton with a paper dust cover instead of polyethylene film. The new dust cover is made from 100% recyclable paper, giving the carton the same basic functionality without the plastic.
The switch created a meaningful reduction in plastic use at scale. For every 1 million 100-count flat cartons, the client eliminates approximately 1,219 lbs. of plastic. For every 1 million cube cartons, the reduction is approximately 902 lbs. of plastic.
“A production-floor problem that took showing up and listening to fix, not another vendor call.”
“When equipment couldn’t keep up with demand, we found a way to add capacity without tying up capital.”