ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 25, 2024--
DS Smith, a leading fiber-based packaging manufacturer, has launched PackRight 2.0, a hybrid collaboration experience. The new offering features interactive workshops to help businesses in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), e-commerce and other industries innovate and enhance the sustainability of their packaging using DS Smith’s proprietary Circular Design Metrics.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240725973418/en/
The workshops, which are hosted at the company’s PackRight Centers in Reading, Pa., and Lebanon, Ind., bring DS Smith’s designers and engineers together with customers to develop design solutions that boost packaging efficiency, effectiveness, appeal and sustainability. The new workshops are the first in the U.S. packaging and design space to employ advanced visual content platform solutions from leading French collaboration tech start-up Klaxoon.
By combining creativity, strategic insights, and cutting-edge technology to streamline the design process, these collaborative sessions reduce the time, effort and expense required to create new packaging that addresses brands’ growing circularity needs.
“Our PackRight Centers integrate circularity with design, improving the process needed to bring inspiration from the drawing board to the factory floor,” said Steven Rose, Managing Director, Packaging, DS Smith North America. “No longer just for in person collaboration, our new PackRight design workshops enable all customers interested in reducing their environmental impact to take advantage of DS Smith’s design and engineering expertise and our proven Circular Design Metrics process.”
How it works: Developing insights for circular solutions
Initial Audit: DS Smith’s new PackRight offering begins with an initial site visit and an audit of a customer’s present packaging supply chain. This supply chain audit provides essential insights for the path of innovation required for a redesign that can boost the value, efficiency and sustainability of a customer’s packaging.
Collaboration and Brainstorming: Following the audit, DS Smith PackRight Center specialists conduct a workshop using digital collaboration tools to enhance brainstorming and teamwork between DS Smith and client teams. The platform combines whiteboard and videoconferencing features, allowing session leaders to drive interactive sessions with live questions, voting, word clouds, and additional tools to capture and report participant feedback.
Rating and Comparing Circularity: During the Circular Design Metrics analysis in PackRight workshops, DS Smith’s designers and engineers help brands rate and compare the circularity of packaging designs across eight indicators: carbon footprint, design for reuse, supply chain optimization, recyclability, planet safety, material utilization, renewable source and recycled content.
Rapid Prototyping and Review: Workshop leaders create rapid prototypes on demand using the PackRight Centers’ digital printing and cutting equipment, and then evaluate the performance of those prototypes on in-house testing equipment. High-end cameras quickly and accurately capture print samples for collaborative review and analysis. A proprietary DS Smith Value Tool analysis helps to quantify the benefits customers gain by calculating the total cost of ownership for packaging designs.
With this process, DS Smith’s PackRight Centers help brands develop innovative and sustainable packaging designs. The result is more effective, circular packaging solutions that improve supply cycle effectiveness, increase sales, and manage risk.
Recently, the new workshops helped a virtual team from a South American food brand establish new sustainability targets. DS Smith has also used the new PackRight workshops while collaborating with a leading equipment manufacturer on enhancements to fiber-based beverage packaging solutions. For more information about sustainable packaging design and analysis with DS Smith PackRight, visit www.dssmith.com/packright.
About DS Smith:
DS Smith is a leading provider of sustainable fiber-based packaging worldwide, which is supported by recycling and papermaking operations. It plays a central role in the value chain across sectors including e-commerce, fast-moving consumer goods and industrials.
Through its purpose of ‘Redefining Packaging for a Changing World’ and its Now& Next sustainability strategy, DS Smith is committed to leading the transition to the circular economy, while delivering more circular solutions for its customers and wider society – replacing problem plastics, taking carbon out of supply chains and providing innovative recycling solutions. Its bespoke box-to-box in 14 days model, design capabilities and innovation strategy sit at the heart of this response.
Headquartered in London and a member of the FTSE 100, DS Smith operates in 34 countries employing around 30,000 people and is a Strategic Partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Its history can be traced back to the box-making businesses started in the 1940s by the Smith family. www.dssmith.com
DS Smith, a leading fiber-based packaging manufacturer, has launched PackRight 2.0, a hybrid collaboration experience offering interactive workshops to help businesses in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), e-commerce and other industries innovate and enhance the sustainability of their packaging using DS Smith’s proprietary Circular Design Metrics. (Photo: Business Wire)
DUBLIN (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with his Irish counterpart, Saturday in what was billed as an attempt to reset relations between the two countries after years of tensions following the U.K.'s departure from the European Union.
Starmer's visit to meet Irish premier Simon Harris is the first by a British leader to Ireland in five years. It is a further sign that the two wish to deepen relations on economic and security matters. Harris was the first international leader Starmer hosted following his Labour Party's landslide election victory on July 4.
“Today is really significant because we have made clear our ambition to reset the relationship and today we take that forward," Starmer said after the afternoon meeting with Harris at Farmleigh House in Dublin, the Irish Government’s formal reception house for state visits. “We are clear that by March we want to have a summit to show the yield from this and then annual summits after that.”
Relations between the two countries have been strained ever since the U.K. voted in June 2016 to leave the European Union, especially in light of how it affected the political structures of Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K.
When the U.K. left the bloc, the British government and the EU agreed to keep the Irish border free of customs posts and other checks because an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland. Later, Starmer's Conservative predecessor Rishi Sunak renegotiated the initial agreement, and that has won the support of both sides of the Northern Irish political divide.
Starmer said now was a chance to further solidify the relations, both with Ireland as well as the EU. He has said that the U.K. will not seek to rejoin the EU under his leadership, nor the bloc's frictionless single market and customs union. However, he has made it clear that he wants to renegotiate elements of the post-Brexit trade deal with the EU in order to bolster growth.
“We are also resetting our relationship with the EU and I have made it very clear that I want a closer relationship with the EU," he said. “That is of course on security, on defense, but also on trade, reducing the friction and any business here in Ireland will tell you that reducing the friction helps and so we want to reset that relationship."
He has been touring EU capitals since he got elected in the hope of generating the goodwill to move forward on that front, as well as "stand together" on international issues such as the war in Ukraine.
The two leaders participated in a business roundtable in Dublin to explore how a “reset” in relations can benefit trade. The economic relationship is worth around 120 billion euros ($130 billion), supporting thousands of jobs on both sides of the Irish Sea.
The two leaders headed off after the early meeting to a soccer match between Ireland and England in Dublin, which provided them with a clear photo opportunity. They swapped jerseys with Starmer holding up an Irish shirt with his surname on it and Harris holding up an England jersey with his name on it.
“We will have intense and friendly competition, and then we will renew and reset again later in the evening,” said Harris, who is also new in the job having been elected premier in April.
Starmer, a keen soccer player, laughed when asked if he would wear it to the match later.
“It will make an appearance in my nine-a-side," he said. "This will be proudly worn in north London before too long.”
Pylas contributed from London.
The Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Harris, left and his British counterpart Keir Starmer hold up their respective national soccer teams shirts, with their names on their opposite teams shirt, at Farmleigh House in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison Pool)
The Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Harris, left listens to his British counterpart Keir Starmer as they meet for talks at Farmleigh House in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison Pool)
The Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Harris, left listens to his British counterpart Keir Starmer as they meet for talks at Farmleigh House in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison Pool)
The Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Harris, left watch as his British counterpart Keir Starmer signs the visitors book as they meet for talks at Farmleigh House in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison Pool)
The Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Harris, left, gestures as he greets his British counterpart Keir Starmer as they meet for talks at Farmleigh House in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison Pool)
The Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Harris, right speaks with his British counterpart Keir Starmer as they meet for talks at Farmleigh House in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison Pool)
The Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Harris, left, and his British counterpart Keir Starmer hold up their respective national soccer teams shirts, with their names on their opposite teams shirt, at Farmleigh House in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Ireland and England play a nations league soccer match in Dublin later. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison Pool)
The Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Harris, left, gestures as he greets his British counterpart Keir Starmer as they meet for talks at Farmleigh House in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison Pool)
The Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Harris, right, listens to his British counterpart Keir Starmer as they meet for talks at Farmleigh House in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison Pool)
The Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Harris, left, and his British counterpart Keir Starmer hold up their respective national soccer teams shirts, with their names on their opposite teams shirt, at Farmleigh House in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Ireland and England play a nations league soccer match in Dublin later. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison Pool)
