As a brand, how you ship and what you pay for that shipping plays a large role in your bottom line. Shipping alone offers a number of its own challenges, but when a major shipping company decides to increase their prices, you often have little recourse as far as dealing with this challenge.
Last month, FedEx did just that when it announced that, as of January 2015, shipping prices for both FedEx Freight and FedEx Ground are set to increase. This increase comes in the form of applying dimensional weight pricing to all shipments, rather than just those measuring three cubic feet or more. This can mean a significant increase to your shipping bill.
Check out this release from Reuters to find out more about the price hike: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/02/tn-fedex-corp-idUSnBw025775a+100+BSW20140502. According to the article, this increase shouldn’t be too surprising, as the author notes: “Dimensional weight pricing is a common industry practice that sets the transportation price based on package volume—the amount of space a package occupies in relation to its actual weight.” Somehow though, this doesn’t make having to pay that extra cost any easier to take.
So, with this in mind, what can you do to mitigate the additional costs to ship? Firstly, the design of your packaging plays a big role in minimizing the size of a package and the space that package will occupy in transport. By sitting down with a designer and perhaps tweaking your current design, you can optimize packaging and significantly decrease shipping costs.
What about weight? Is the weight of your product packaging as low as it can be? If not, consider lightweight packaging to help lower the weight. Lightweight containerboard packaging has come a long way over the past few years, and the right company can offer you lightweight packaging with the same strength and protective capabilities as its heavier counterpart.
What is lightweight containerboard? Essentially, this form of packaging is constructed using corrugated board with a base weight of less than 26lbs/thousand square feet. The manufacturing process is a bit different in that fibres are tighter together, resulting in a higher fibre content but a reduced weight. This condensed fibre concentration means strength without the high numbers on the scale.
Whether you ship with FedEx and are anticipating a higher payout for shipping or ship with a different company but are looking to reduce your shipping costs, a smart, cost-effective design and lightweight containerboard are always a smart bet.
For more about significantly reducing the weight of your product packaging and therefore the cost of your shipping overall, please contact Packaging Technologies Inc. by calling 1-800-303-5883.
