Right-sizing sounds like one of those topics that should have been solved years ago. Match the product to the box, reduce wasted space and move on. Yet in practice, a large number of businesses are still shipping a surprising amount of air. Not because they do not care about cost or sustainability, but because packaging habits are hard to undo once they feel ‘safe enough’.
As you might imagine, the cost of that extra space often stays hidden. It creeps into transport bills, warehouse layouts, labour time, and damage rates in ways that are rarely traced back to box size alone. Right-sizing sticks around as one of the simplest packaging improvements available and still one of the most underused.
Space is rarely free. Courier pricing based on dimensional weight has made this more obvious, but transport is only part of a wider issue. Oversized cartons take up more pallet space, reduce vehicle fill rates and limit how efficiently warehouses can be organised. Over time, that inefficiency becomes baked into operations.
Research from the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs highlights that packaging volume reduction is one of the most effective ways to cut packaging-related emissions, largely due to transport efficiency gains rather than material savings alone.
Storage tells a similar story. Larger boxes mean fewer units per shelf, more frequent replenishment and more handling steps. Those costs rarely sit under ‘packaging’ in a budget, which is why they can be easily overlooked.
Fear of damage is one of the biggest barriers to right-sizing. When something breaks in transit, the instinctive response is often to add more void fill or move up a box size. Sometimes that instinct is justified, especially for fragile or high-value items. Quite often, though, it is masking a design issue rather than a protection problem.
Data from Smithers suggests that poor packaging design, not insufficient material strength, is a leading contributor to transit damage across eCommerce and distribution environments.
In other words, bigger does not automatically mean safer. Excess space allows products to move, even when packed with void fill. A well-fitted structure that limits movement can outperform a larger box filled with paper or plastic protection.
There is a tendency to focus on materials first. Thicker board, heavier grades, more layers. Structural design is often the quieter hero. Die-cut features, internal retention, and geometry that lock products into place can reduce damage without increasing material use.
This is where right-sizing tends to stall. It requires time, testing, and a willingness to challenge “what we’ve always used”. It also requires collaboration between packaging suppliers and operations teams, not just procurement. The payoff is usually a pack that protects better while using less.
Right-sizing is one of the few sustainability improvements that rarely requires a compromise in brand presentation. Smaller packs use less material, reduce void fill, and improve pallet density. They also tend to lower emissions associated with transport, which is where a large share of packaging’s environmental impact sits.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation regularly highlights packaging reduction and reuse as higher-impact actions than material substitution alone.
As you might have guessed, for businesses under pressure from Extended Producer Responsibility reporting and recyclability-based fees, reducing material use outright can be more effective than switching to alternative materials without addressing size and design.
Rightsizing usually loses momentum because the process feels incremental, without coming with a product launch or a marketing rebrand. The desire to rightsize usually sits between departments, meaning it rarely has a single owner. As you therefore might have experienced, boxes that ‘work well enough’ continue to ship year after year.
Operations teams often raise practical objections, such as pack speed, availability and flexibility, with Marketing Teams worrying about presentation consistency, and finally Finance want to see clear ROI numbers. All of those concerns are valid, which is why rightsizing works best when reviewed SKU by SKU rather than as a sweeping change.
Rather than reviewing everything at once, it is quite often more productive to start small. Look at the three SKUs you ship most frequently. Ask whether the pack size still reflects the product inside, current courier pricing and today’s handling realities. In many cases, those packs were specified under very different conditions.
Let’s be clear, though: right-sizing does not mean reinvention. It means giving attention to a key cog in your fulfilment. When done well, it will reduce cost, boost protection and support sustainability goals without drawing attention to itself.
If you are curious whether your most-shipped items are still using the right pack sizes, a brief review can quickly expose opportunities. A focused conversation is often enough to identify where space, material, and cost can be brought back into balance. If you’d like to explore how rightsizing can upgrade your packaging processes, you can send us a message, email sales@allpack.uk.com, or call 01543 396 700 to talk through practical next steps.