The next-generation, lightweight material boxes will utilise 30% to 40% less fibre than traditionally used in the US and will utilise some recycled material as feedstock.
30,000 boxes an hour
The facility will produce approximately 30,000 boxes an hour and 2 billion square feet of recyclable packaging a year.
The location will serve customers and brands with distribution centres in Chicago, Columbus, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Nashville.
"Our box plant stands apart from the rest in the industry,” said Mark Ushpol, MD, packaging, DS Smith North America.
“Our teams are free to focus on working directly with customers designing custom packaging that reduces system waste, drives sustainability and provides immediate value to the supply chain.”
The plant will produce more than 17 million square feet of lightweight recyclable packaging a day and 2 billion square feet of recyclable packaging a year.
It has an underground scrap conveyer system, which will drastically reduce dust and noise typically found at conventional box plants.
The 550,000-square-foot packaging facility was designed to model three DS Smith locations in Europe that are automated, customer-centric plants, which can accept and process high-volume orders with short lead times.
British Retail Consortium
The facility will also be BRC (British Retail Consortium) certified, a trade association for the UK food industry and is a globally recognised 'gold standard' for food safety.
Adoption of the certification in the US is growing and ensures customer product integrity is maintained during storage and distribution to uphold customer confidence in quality control measures.
Miles Roberts, Group CEO, DS Smith, added, by opening a plant to focus on sustainable materials, it "can support our customers’ needs in a changing world.
“We look forward to serving many of the global brands we work with in Europe, as well as a range of new customers, with their US-based packaging,” he said.
