When businesses review their packaging spend, they almost always look at the same number: cost per unit. How much does a box cost? How much is a roll of tape? Can we get it cheaper elsewhere?
It's the wrong question. Or rather, it's an incomplete one. Unit cost is one input into your packaging economics, but it's nowhere near the whole picture. Businesses that focus on it exclusively often end up with packaging that costs more in total than a more expensive alternative would have.
Here's a better way to think about what your packaging actually costs — and what it's worth.
Why Unit Cost Is the Wrong Metric
A box that costs 12p instead of 18p looks like a saving of 6p per order. But if the cheaper box takes an extra 45 seconds to assemble, and you're packing 500 orders a day, that's 375 minutes of labour per day — over six hours — at whatever your packing staff cost per hour. The 6p saving evaporates quickly.
Unit cost tells you what you pay for packaging. It tells you nothing about what your packaging costs to use.
The Hidden Costs of Slow Packaging
Packing speed is one of the most underestimated factors in packaging economics. The format of your packaging — how it assembles, how it closes, how it's sealed — has a direct impact on your throughput and your labour cost per order.
Crashlock and pop-up box formats, for example, assemble in seconds without taping the base. A standard RSC (regular slotted carton) requires the base to be folded and taped before anything goes in. At low volumes the difference is negligible. At high volumes it's significant — and it gets more significant as your business grows.
Our crashlock and pop-up packaging is specifically designed for operations where packing speed matters. If you've never timed your packers on different box formats, it's worth doing — the results are often surprising.
The Hidden Costs of Cheap Packaging
There's a version of cost-cutting in packaging that ends up being extremely expensive: buying packaging that isn't fit for purpose because it's cheap per unit.
Boxes that aren't strong enough for your products lead to damage in transit. Damage in transit leads to returns, replacements, and customer service time. A single damaged order — replacement product, reshipping cost, staff time — can cost anywhere from £10 to £50 or more depending on what you're selling. If your packaging saves 10p per order but causes one extra return in every 200 orders, you're losing money.
The same logic applies to protective packaging. Retention packaging and properly specified void fill costs more per unit than loose packing peanuts or a scrunched sheet of paper — but it holds products securely in position, reduces movement in transit, and cuts damage rates measurably. The upfront cost is higher; the total cost is often lower.
How to Calculate True Packaging Cost Per Order
A more complete picture of packaging cost per order includes:
- Cost of packaging materials (box, void fill, tape, dunnage)
- Labour time to pack the order, valued at your hourly packing cost
- Damage rate — what percentage of orders arrive damaged, and what does each damaged order cost you?
- Returns processing cost — staff time, restocking, repackaging
- Customer experience impact — harder to quantify, but poor packaging drives negative reviews and reduces repeat purchase rates
Adding these up gives you a true cost per order that you can use to compare packaging options properly. A more expensive box that packs faster, protects better, and reduces your damage rate will frequently win on total cost even when it loses on unit price.
The ROI of Faster Packaging Formats
If you're packing more than 100 orders a day, packaging format is worth serious attention. The difference between a self-assembly crashlock box and a standard carton can easily be 20–30 seconds per order. At 200 orders a day, that's over an hour of packing time saved — every day.
Take a look at our fast eCommerce packaging range and our size-adjustable packaging options, which reduce the number of box sizes you need to stock and eliminate the wasted space — and void fill — that comes from putting small products in oversized boxes.
The ROI of Better Protective Packaging
Returns are one of the most corrosive costs in eCommerce and manufacturing fulfilment, and packaging-related damage is one of the most preventable causes. If your current damage rate is 2% and better packaging brings it to 0.5%, the saving on a volume of 10,000 orders per year — at even a modest £15 cost per damaged order — is £2,250. Against a packaging uplift of a few pence per order, that's a straightforward return on investment.
Browse our retention packaging and paper void fill options in the shop — or if you'd like help working out what's right for your products and volumes, that's exactly what we're here for.
A Simple Framework for Reviewing Your Packaging Spend
Before your next packaging review, try answering these four questions:
- What is our current damage rate, and what does each damaged order cost us?
- How long does it take to pack a typical order, and have we ever tested alternatives?
- Are we using the right size boxes for our products, or are we overpacking regularly?
- Are we factoring returns costs into our packaging decisions, or just looking at unit price?
If any of those questions are hard to answer, that's where the opportunity is.
Want us to review your current packaging setup? Get in touch with our team and we'll take a fresh look at what you're using and where the savings might be.