Securing a consumer goods main stocking line with quality and service excellence guarantees

Services provided

• Material sourcing
• Packaging design
• Production

Brief

A leading UK manufacturer of consumer goods was experiencing ongoing quality challenges with its corrugated packaging supplier. These issues were disrupting the customer’s packing lines, increasing wastage, and threatening supply reliability during busy seasonal periods.

The business took the decision to source a new corrugated packaging supplier and engaged Colton Packaging to review the challenges and explore how we could deliver an alternative supply solution where reliability and quality were prioritised.

The business relied heavily on its main stocking line, which accounted for the majority of its annual corrugated usage. Three key challenges had been identified over a six-month period, covering:

• Box Delamination: The current supplier’s packing line was failing, with poor board bonding resulting in delays
• Inconsistent DIMs: Variations in board grade and finished dimensions created inefficiencies and damaged products
• Late Deliveries: Unreliable supply left the customer frequently over-stocking to mitigate the risk of running out of packaging

All three of these issues were having significant operational and financial impacts on the business, making the supplier partnership unsustainable in the long-term.

The Solution

We assigned the customer a dedicated account manager and supply-chain coordinator to ensure fast communication and proactive planning. The next step was to complete a technical audit at the customer’s site led by our quality and production specialists. This audit included:

• Board Performance Analysis: Testing competitor consumer goods samples against the customer’s required performance standards
• Line Trials: Running our boxes on the customer’s packing lines to demonstrate consistency and real-time benefits
• Service Review: Designing a stock and serve programme tailored to the customer’s annual packaging demands, including seasonal peaks, to eliminate the risk of stock running out

To ensure quality of material, we introduced a high-performance, consistent board grade to meet required strength and dimensional requirements while agreeing a bespoke stock and serve strategy. We also built a dashboard to document quality checks, corrective actions, and continuous improvement measures, and planned quarterly business reviews to track performance against KPIs.

By switching to Colton Packaging, the customer enjoyed immediate quality improvements, with no delamination or dimension failures reported within the first three months. Delivery reliability also improved significantly, with 100% On Time In Full (OTIF) achieved over the first six months. The customer also reduced on-site safety stock by 30% due to our stock and serve model, giving the customer renewed confidence in the reliability of their supply chain.

As a result of our performance and recommendations, the customer invited us to quote for a further two product lines and after successful trials, we secured both a seasonal promotional line and a high-volume everyday SKU.

We are delighted with the outcome for our customer, with our commitment to quality, service and responsiveness positioning Colton Packaging as the businesses preferred corrugated packaging supplier.

For a reliable consumer goods corrugated packaging service where quality is the priority, speak to our team of design and production experts.