Did You Know Flexible Packaging Can Reduce Shipping Costs?

More and more companies are making the switch to flexible packaging — and with good reason. It’s consumer conscious and environmentally friendly, and it can save you money. Here are three ways that choosing flexible materials for your organic product packaging can reduce your company’s shipping costs.

1. It’s Durable

Ask any shipping service: damage can happen during transport. Whether it’s due to a sudden and unexpected impact or simply the constant vibration of a shipping truck hurtling down the highway, injuries are inevitable, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make packaging choices that will lessen the chance of lost product.

Small losses here and there may not seem like a big deal, but over time, they can add up to a lot of wasted resources and lost revenue. Because of their pliability, flexible packages can hold up against considerable bumps, bangs, and other impacts during travel. They can also be easier to stack, increasing load stability and reducing the likelihood of damage.

2. It Takes Up Less Space in the Truck

Crates, boxes, and jars are space hogs that take up precious real estate in shipping trucks and other transportation. Often, interior space is wasted within these containers as well. Picture all the dead air inside your average box of fruit snacks or the squandered space inside so many jars.

In contrast, flexible containers, such as fruit juice or vitamin pouches, waste little to no space both internally and externally. They’re easy to arrange and rearrange inside virtually any cargo space, letting you maximize space and profitability with each shipment. In the simplest terms, less surplus packaging means more boxes per shipment, as well as fewer trucks to maintain, less fuel to buy, and fewer drivers to pay.

The variety of designs when it comes to flexible packaging can also save you money when it comes time to ship. If you’re no longer confined to bulky boxes and jars and instead can use pouches and other sleek, pliant shapes, you can more efficiently pack boxes and truckloads, thereby conserving space.

If you regularly ship with carriers such as UPS or FedEx, conserving spacing may be extra important. These transporters’ shipping rates are based not on a product’s weight but on its dimensional weight, which is calculated using both the actual weight of the product and the size of the container that it’s in. In situations like these, wasted space is wasted cash.

3. It Holds More of Your Product

While they may not take up a lot of space in the back of the truck, flexible packages themselves are surprisingly spacious. If you’re shipping a liquid product, such as water or broth, for example, you can transport 10 gallons of that product in only 1.5 pounds of flexible plastic packaging. Moving it in aluminum cans, on the other hand, would require at least twice as many pounds of material. Making the switch to flexible containers can free up revenue that can be invested in other areas of your business.

Flexible packaging provides a plethora of benefits to both you and your customers. Make the switch to flexible containers today to start lowering your shipping costs and raising your profits.