DS Smith’s group director for innovation unboxes R&D from Europe-first R8 center

16 Oct 2023 --- This month, DS Smith announced the launch of its R&D and Innovation Centre, branded R8. The UK facility is an “industry-first,” facilitating the acceleration of R&D for new packaging fulfillment solutions.

We speak to Marjolein Lem, group director of Innovation at DS Smith, about how the R&D and Innovation Centre can change the UK and European packaging landscape. We also discuss current R&D focus areas for packaging and prototyping. 

What spurred DS Smith to conceive of and build the R8 facility? 
Lem: Living up to our purpose, Redefining Packaging for Changing World, requires us to go the extra mile with R&D and innovation. Technology is constantly evolving, and at DS Smith, we are committed to putting great packaging at the heart of global supply chains. That’s why R8 exists: To support us to fundamentally challenge our beliefs and ways of working, actively explore new materials and approaches and accelerate strategic partnerships with customers and partners. 

We believe R8 is unique in the industry and the first facility of its kind in Europe — a key part of our investment to innovate in collaboration with customers and technology partners. R8 is part of our £100 million (US$121 million) investment in R&D and innovation to accelerate our movement toward a circular economy. While this is the home of our Group Innovation and R&D functions, it also sits alongside our global paper and recycling labs in the UK and Germany, our network of DS Smith R&D scientists and design and innovation centers in our different regions in Europe and the US.

DS Smith’s recyclable sushi tray for Eat Happy.Our customers are asking us to solve more of their challenges well beyond the cardboard box. They want support with packaging fulfillment, help with plastic replacement and advice on reducing the carbon impact of their business. They want packaging with new technologies to give them more insight into their supply chain. We’re determined to find them solutions, but we know that we don’t always have the skills and experience within DS Smith. That’s why we believe it’s essential to work in partnerships in an innovation ecosystem. 

And that is the second reason that R8 exists: As a place to collaborate with strategic customers and partners. Where we invite our customers to talk to us not only about what they need today, but also what they think might be relevant in two, five, ten years. Great innovation takes time, and in R8 we want to make a start on the things our customers will need for the future.

What are the most important areas for research at the moment? 
Lem: As a company, we tend to set targets to help maintain a clear focus. Our Strategic Innovation Agenda has a clear set of priorities to guide where we focus our resources, organized into five Growth Areas and 13 value spaces. 

Plastics replacement and the elimination of problematic plastics is one leading and critical area for research. We have a target to eliminate one billion items of problem plastics by 2025. We are also committed to optimizing fiber for individual supply chains in 100% of our new packaging solutions.

Alternative fibers are a significant focal point for our R&D, and one of our recent agenda-changing products is a fully recyclable sushi tray for the specialist sushi creators at Eat Happy. These are for the “food on-the-go” sector, and the tray and the lid of the new packaging are made from natural and renewable raw materials using corrugated cardboard. The solution is designed to be water and grease-repellent to protect and preserve the sushi product inside while maintaining 100% sustainable credentials. DS Smith replaced plastic handles with cardboard-based outer packaging for 1.5 liter PET soft drink multipacks.

Another recent innovation is “DS Smith Lift Up” in partnership with Coca-Cola HBC Austria and Krones. We replaced plastic handles with easy to “Lift Up” cardboard-based outer packaging for 1.5 liter PET soft drink multipacks and this alone is anticipated to reduce around two hundred metric tons of plastic per annum. This innovation is a perfect example of a partnership approach to solving a problem in an important category.

We are also working hard on reusable paper packaging systems for e-commerce to match our expertise in single-use packs. Our focus is on highly efficient fiber-based mailers and flexible packs — potentially even hybrids of a bag and a box. Working with new partners, we also want to offer total packaging services to e-tailers and other customers to increase the productivity of their fulfillment centers.

In the area of Smart Packaging, we are investing in different technologies that support the use of the box as a data point and are building a digital platform to support the data-driven needs of Packaging as a Service. 

What areas are already researched but require prototyping at the facility? 
Lem: Innovation is integral to the DS Smith process. Our designers are given time and encouraged to prototype and test their concepts in the factories as a matter of course. But with R8 being exclusively reserved for R&D and Innovation, we have a place where we can safely and rapidly test concepts and run pilot projects away without impacting our core operations or our customers’ processes. 

For instance, R8 is currently hosting the first pilot machine line of our flagship radical innovation program in the space of channel agility. We can’t go into details here, but let it suffice to say that we’re reinventing the making, filling and deployment of a filled cardboard box or display — with multiple components, automation and data science — to create sustainable responsiveness never seen before in retail packaging.

By Natalie Schwertheim, with additional reporting from Louis Gore-Langton