A world-first Aussie innovation, ICEE's flat-folding, re-usable EPS supply chain solution, has gone into licensed production.
While 100 per cent expanded polystyrene (EPS), or as ICEE likes to call it, airpop*, has long been acknowledged as a valuable packaging material, its use has always been stymied by the logistical requirements of storing, transporting and carting bulky boxes for re-use or recycling. Companies' reluctance to deal with these fundamental issues has ensured EPS' status as the option of last resort, to be used only when no alternative can be found. That is, until now.
Enter the ICEE Fold Flat EPS Box, the key innovation of which lies in the patented process that forms an integrated hinge into an EPS product. This process permits EPS to be produced flat, folded into shape, and unfolded again after use and stored easily – all the while maintaining the hinge’s integral strength and durability.
This innovation is the product of three year's development by Gary and Les Skinner, respectively managing director and engineering director of ICEE, who have worked to eliminate the negative aspects associated with the manufacture, supply and reprocessing of conventional EPS boxes.
“Fold-flat has changed all this: transport and storage logistics are no longer a barrier to the use of EPS,” Gary Skinner says. “We think that the ICEE Fold Flat EPS Box will be the packaging of choice for the movement of internet groceries, pre-prepared meals and pharmaceutical items.”
With the growth in online retailing and and the various ways in which companies now deliver goods to consumers – either via bricks and mortar, B2B distribution or direct to homes – the ongoing evolution of e- and m-Commerce depends on the supply chain and logistics behind it evolving as well.
And this is where EPS comes into its own. As a material, EPS has high thermal and cushioning qualities and an attractive environmental footprint. EPS containers offer high compression strength and thermal advantages, which keep contents safe, fresh and secure during transportation under adverse climate conditions. According to Skinner, currently there is no ideal packaging solution for online food sales, a need that has been highlighted by most of the packaging distributors and designers he and Les have spoken to at trade shows. In fact, it was at interpack 2014 when PKN first spotted the ICEE team and its innovation.
“This global industry [online retailing] is growing at a phenomenal rate, and according to IBISWorld, has been ranked in the top five industries expected to soar in 2015 with the second highest amount of revenue growth,” he says. “This increase is not just limited to time-conscious consumers buying groceries online, but also to the click-and-collect sector for dinner meal kits to be prepared at home, as well as ready-made frozen meals, takeout and delivery aggregate sites.”
“These are not minor shifts. E-commerce represents the biggest shift in spending patterns and consumer behaviour since the corner grocery store was replaced by the supermarket,” Skinner says.
“Online retail will account for anything between 15 per cent and 27 per cent of all retail sales within the next four years. The impact this will have on Australia’s supply chain is enormous, with only the logistically savvy surviving.
“The bottom line is that a lot of transactions are going to occur involving the movement of fresh produce, groceries, meat, seafood, baked goods and pharmaceuticals. Every one of these transactions requires a hygienic, thermally superior package that will also provide cushioning and secure sealing.”
The new ICEE process has signed its first licensee, an Australian company Skinner says is eager to unlock the potentially very large new revenue streams the innovation offers.
Skinner says he is confident that the new ICEE production process will soon be independently verified as being significantly higher in productivity than conventional equipment and lower in energy usage.
What will make ICEE's new format a compelling economic proposition is the coupling of two fundamental packaging producers' objectives: deliver faster and cheaper production than that offered by conventional boxes, and introduce the advantages of reduced storage and transportation costs plus the ease of return for re-use or recycling to the supply chain.
* EUMEPS (EU manufacturers of EPS) rebranded EPS as airpop in 2014. ICEE is a member of EUMEPS.
