Boxes are backbone of E-commerce – according to corrugated.org. Indeed, due to the long voyage of transportation and logistics chain, e-commerce products need a light, strong and affordable packaging solution like corrugated boxes. Also, well-built packaging is one of the vital requirements from consumers for their e-commerce purchase and corrugated boxes perfectly match this expectation. In the following statistics, we can partly see the bond between corrugated packaging and Ecommerce and industries:
According to eMarketer in 2017, e-commerce was responsible for 10% of all retail sales, and was expected to grow to nearly 15% by the end of 2020. As the consequence, the demand for corrugated packaging used for e-commerce is also surging recently. Following the supply and demand rule, corrugated packaging and Ecommerce market will grow together.
In Smithers’s report about the Future of Corrugated Packaging to 2023, the statistician pointed out that e-commerce packaging – including corrugated, flexible, and protective or transit packaging – would reach almost $55 billion in 2022. Corrugated materials for e-commerce packaging alone might worth $20 billion. The overall growth rate for the packaging industry was estimated around 2.9% for 5 years period from 2017 to 2022.
Calculation of transportation cost for corrugated packaging and Ecommerce
The transportation cost of e-commerce package is based on gross weight or dimension weight, whichever is higher. Dimension weight basically is calculated by length x width x height in cm and divided by 6000. For this matter, corrugated boxes provide both light materials and the standard dimensions for optimizing the cost.
Sustainability in corrugated packaging and ecommerce
In a survey from First Insight, about 50% of participated buyers think Amazon shipments have excess packaging. The effort of reducing packaging layers in e-commerce is important in both cost-cutting and the sustainability. For many e-commerce products, only a thick and strong corrugated box is enough for protection, other inner packaging and lashing is not really necessary.
Since corrugated packaging and Ecommerce are non-separable. E-commerce operators have actively educated their consumers about recycling by putting the Corrugated Recycle Symbols on their packaging. In fact, both retailers and consumers should play equal roles in building corrugated recovery.
Sources: https://www.smithers.com/resources/2018/may/e-commerce-a-$20-billion-market-for-corrugated
