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Five wooden packaging alternatives that can cut your costs

presswood palletplastic palletcorrugated pallet box

If you’re business buys packaging, you’ll be well aware that raw material price increases and unprecedented demand are occurring globally. The knock-on effect of this has been an untimely stream of unit price increases for many packaging categories, like corrugated and stretch film.

Timber prices have been steadily increasing too, which means wooden packaging like pallets and crates are going to be rising as well. So, how can you look to control your packaging costs when it comes to timber products?

It’s time to consider alternatives

Whilst using wooden packaging has a lot of advantages, lighter substitutes could help you reduce your costs whilst still maintaining the strength and durability required to protect your goods. Here are five wooden packaging alternatives for you to consider:

  1. Corrugated pallets

Wooden pallets are probably the most common type of timber packing you’ll see. Switching to corrugated cardboard pallets could help you reduce your total load weight by 20kg. This can help you reduce your overall transport weight and costs. They can also be collapsed for storage, reducing the amount of space you need to assign to them. If you pay for space this could be another saving.

  1. Presswood pallets

Another timber pallet alternative is a presswood pallet. Made from a combination of wood fibres and resin, presswood pallets are cost effective and lightweight. They’re also stackable and could save up to 50% of storage space versus a traditional pallet.

  1. Plastic pallets

Plastic pallets weigh a lot less than their wooden counterparts and can be reused over 200 times – so they can reduce costs. They’re ideal for closed loop systems as they can be washed and sterilised, great for clean environments like food manufacturing or the medical industry.

  1. Corrugated shipping crates

Alongside corrugated pallets, you could also swap your wooden shipping crates to heavy duty cardboard. This would decrease your total shipping weights and deliver further cost savings. They’re another space saver, as they can be stored flat and will take up less volume in your warehouse.

  1. Solid board gift boxes

If you’re using retailing wooden gift boxes with products like wine, spirits or food hampers you could consider solid board giftboxes instead. These are lightweight, space saving and can even enhance your branding as you can choose to have them printed in different styles and design to suit you.

 

For more information about aby of these wooden packaging alternatives email contact@networkpack.co.uk or complete our contact form.