While ABB has been adopting a circular approach in its product design and manufacturing processes, it is also adopting it across the value chain. In Australia, ABB is closely working with one of its' main channel partners to adopt sustainable packaging practices that significantly reduce, reuse, and recycle materials. This is contributing to a significant reduction in packaging waste.
Partner inspires supplier
IPD is a leading distributor of electrical and automation products across Australia. As a key channel partner with an extensive distribution network, IPD ships ABB products to customers all around the country. Sustainability has been a key focus area at IPD for many years with the distributor reporting to APCO (Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation) on waste streams and its recycling strategies.
“We are conscious of the need for better sustainable packaging solutions surrounding the protection and material used in our product range,” says Patric Stromquist, General Manager, Operations at IPD Group Ltd.
ABB is our largest supplier and we work with them very closely in a number of ways, and sustainability comes into play here as well.”
Patric and his teams identified a clear opportunity to collaborate with ABB in improving some of their packaging strategies. There was a lot of packaging material that was going to waste in the deliveries IPD was receiving from the ABB warehouse – from cartons to plastic air pouches for void fill. Unpacking cartons along with the other packing materials was also time-consuming for Patric’s teams.
What followed was visiting each other’s warehouses to identify ways to make their operations more sustainable and efficient. Patric and his teams took inspiration from the reusable plastic crates used by supermarkets for home deliveries and decided to adopt these for managing their own deliveries from ABB. A trial was carried out with 200 of these crates purchased by IPD.
“These crates replaced the boxes with plastic air pouches as air-fill. These were leading to a lot of waste earlier,” says Patric. “And plastic is not easy to get rid of. So you actually have to cut the bags to flat pack the plastic to get it into the bin.”
Saving time and improving efficiency
By switching to the reusable crates for shipping products to IPD, the ABB Warehouse team has been able to reduce their use of packaging material. When the deliveries come to the IPD warehouse, Patric’s teams pick up the crates, load them into trolleys and use them to load products into shelves.
“One of the problems we were previously having was actually having to unpack products, put them all on a table, mark them all off, then put stuff onto trolleys to then be put away,” says Patric. “Now we are able to bypass these stages by using the same crates throughout and we have eliminated packaging along the way. This has offered a smart solution and saved time in manual handling.”
Once products have been loaded onto shelves at the IPD warehouse, the crates are flat packed and sent back to the ABB warehouse in Moorebank to be used again.
Paulette Halabi, Sales Operations Manager, ABB Australia, who helped implement the reusable crates at their warehouses, credits IPD with bringing forward a packaging practice that closely aligned with ABB’s own ‘circular’ approach. And this is already making a difference.
"We’ve been able to eliminate the need for cartons, void fill or packaging tape for those products we’re using the crates for,” says Paulette. “We’re seeing a reduction of about 20% of our packaging material over the last year.”
Expanding the circular approach
The success of the reusable crates has made ABB and IPD look at other ways to make their operations more sustainable. One such initiative is replacing the plastic pouches used as void fill in packages with recyclable paper.
“This 100% recyclable paper is something that IPD will be able to keep reusing. They can give the paper a second life when they package out their orders to customers,” says Paulette. “This eliminates air pouches that would otherwise go straight to landfill.”
Another thing we are looking at is building a pool of reusable pallets, which will have ABB and IPD branding. So we'll send products to IPD on these pallets. And once IPD unloads them, they’ll return them to us and we'll use them again.”
By implementing these sustainable packaging practices, ABB and IPD are demonstrating ‘circularity in action’. ABB is now in discussions with another channel partner in Melbourne to explore sustainability initiatives they can implement with them.
“We may not be involved in the designing of our products locally, but our operations give us opportunities to be able to find efficiencies and make things sustainable for the business,” says Paulette. “And ultimately, the changes we make locally, we can roll those out through the chain to our customers.”
“ABB has committed to reaching net zero by 2050 and also helping our partners reach their goals with emissions. We plan to do this by transitioning our entire vehicle fleet to electrical and also having our sites using renewable energy sources and embedding circularity into our product design and development.”
