A packaging partner for e-commerce
As e-commerce continues to gain strength, packaging has become increasingly important as a large part of the customer experience. And brands need a packaging partner they can trust.
With 20,000 employees in more than 300 locations around the world, Sonoco has been innovating packaging to help protect and present our customers’ products in the highly competitive retail environment. Our diversified product portfolio breaks down into four segments: Industrial Solutions, Consumer Products, Protective Solutions, and Display and Packaging.
Our consumer packaging products range from stand up flexible pouches and rigid plastic containers, to rigid paper containers. Our display and packaging business operates pack centers for some of the largest consumer packaged goods companies in the world, and we make award-winning point-of-sale displays that you find in retail outlets. On the industrial side of our business, we manufacture large tubes and cores for winding paper, specialty films and textiles, in addition to making paper.
Our protective solutions business makes products which protect shipments of a variety of durable consumer goods, like appliances, HVAC systems, plasma televisions and a range of household goods. And our temperature assurance packaging is designed to safely transport temperature- sensitive pharmaceuticals like flu vaccines, blood plasma and other biological products, as well as foam-based materials that go into vehicles to help them lightweight to improve gas mileage.
What does Sonoco have to offer?
Sonoco has worked with Amazon to achieve this certification, which is one more way we can partner with our customers to help them grow and develop new solutions as the global marketplace evolves.
As an official participant in the Amazon Packaging Support and Supplier Network (APASS), Sonoco now provides APASS services directly to vendors, sellers and manufacturers related to package testing in compliance with Amazon’s certification test methods. In this capacity, Sonoco partners with brands to design and certify packaging that meets Amazon’s unique requirements and helps companies protect and sell products more cost effectively.
Packaging Testing:
Combining industry experience with state-of-the-art laboratory testing and simulation facilities, Sonoco delivers tangible solutions for clients in the packaging, paper and print industry supply chains. Our expertise encompasses chemical migration, materials selection, packaging conversion and performance in distribution and use.
We can help you demonstrate the quality, safety and compliance of your raw materials, packaging and products to international standards. Our experts can handle everything from a simple material assessment to the most demanding and complex of technical issues.
We offer support and expertise to help you achieve safe and highly effective packaging. Working from an ISO-accredited laboratory, our packaging experts offer comprehensive performance analysis services for primary packaging. Support includes material and process comparison studies, specification compliance assessments, pack integrity testing and technical investigations.
For more than 50 years, Sonoco has provided package testing solutions to help reduce shipment damage, troubleshoot packaging and supply chain issues, identify cost reduction opportunities, meet sustainability requirements and more. Our experts offer extensive lab-based package testing and transit simulation testing, field-based investigative capabilities and consultative support.
Our Food Contact team has expert knowledge of regulatory requirements around the world. We offer a comprehensive range of migration testing and consulting services, as well as expert analytical testing and investigation to solve problems associated with contaminants, taints, packaging performance and other issues. We have FDA Certified food-grade labs capable of testing a wide range of food products in a number of environments and situations. We can also conduct rapid shelf-life modeling, as well as testing the oxygen and water vapor transmission rates and permeability of packaging.
Pack Design and Machine Interactions:
We understand that the efficiency of today's high-speed packaging lines, and related ability to reduce labor costs, is dependent on optimized pack design and material properties. Our team is able to develop testing methods and apparatus that allow an objective off-line evaluation of pack design and material modifications. It also helps that part of the Sonoco organization provides packaging design, pack-out and fulfillment services, which give us a unique perspective and intimate knowledge of the environments our packaging needs to perform in.
Distribution and Package Testing:
We have expertise throughout the entire supply chain, with an understanding of the drivers and challenges of raw materials providers, converters, packer/fillers, brand owners, logistics providers, retailers and waste management organizations.
We offer a wide range of package testing services, providing clients with a laboratory evaluation of packaged goods performance through the simulation of shipment, storage, handling and climatic conditions.
We support clients addressing the key issues of today:
- Identifying cost reduction opportunities and delivering cost avoidance
- Achieving legal and regulatory compliance
- Delivering progress against the requirement of sustainability
- Reducing damage and improving the appearance of products at the point of sale and through home delivery systems
- Delivering against quality requirements and performance expectations in complex and global supply chains, for both traditional retail systems and e-commerce channels
Package Testing Capabilities:
Our comprehensive testing facilities enable us to offer a wide range of standard tests, which we can combine to create custom testing programs to replicate the product lifecycle.
- Vibration
- Drop and impact
- Thermal and climatic
- High altitude
- Compression
- Shock and fragility
- Post-test integrity support and analysis
- Certified ISTA testing and test reports (including ISTA 6 Amazon)
We also provide vibration and shock field data measurement and analysis, allowing you to gain an in-depth and accurate understanding of the challenges packaging faces along the supply chain.
Packaging Assessments:
We help identify, assess and solve primary packaging failures and performance issues, offering rapid-response troubleshooting for pack and material performance assessments. We are also experts in developing custom test methods and equipment used to solve difficult packaging challenges.
Our expertise, combined with comprehensive laboratory facilities, enable us to adopt an innovative approach to challenging projects. We provide impartial advice and testing to help companies who need an independent assessment of their material, pack or product. In our Protective Solutions division, we can even go as far at consulting for our customer to do complete evaluations from manufacturing to final product delivery. We then help them develop testing protocols and packaging requirements to ensure reduced damage and better customer experience.
When standard test methods are either not available or suitable for measuring the required properties or performance of a material, pack or product, we can develop a custom test method and equipment.
Our capabilities include:
- Objective evaluation of materials, packaging and product performance
- Simulation of consumer handling and in-process situations
- Assessment and comparison of design/feature improvements
- Risk/safety concern assessments
- Tamper-evidence assessments
- Testing of unusual materials unsuitable for standard tests
- Development of sample preparation techniques to allow use of standard methods
- Instrument design and fabrication
- Instrumented impact testing
- Pack stability assessment (resistance to toppling)
- Environmental changes and its impact to packaging performance