DS Smith expands corrugated cardboard facility amid rising demand in France

08 May 2024 --- DS Smith is investing €6 million (US$6.5 million) in its La Chevrolière facility near Nantes, France. The corrugated packaging giant is expanding the facility’s production space by 4,000 square meters, responding to the region’s increasing demand for sustainable corrugated cardboard.

The latest equipment includes a Bobst Mastercut 2.1 die-cut machine and a cardboard pallet production line. Additionally, a new 2,500-square-meter workshop dedicated to the production of Kaypal cardboard pallets has a capacity of 250,000 units and the potential to produce up to 1.5 million pallets annually. 

Thibault Laumonier, regional managing director for DS Smith in France, tells Packaging Insights: “At DS Smith Packaging France, we understand that innovation and respect for the environment go hand-in-hand and this is in keeping with our ‘Now and Next’ sustainability strategy and company-wide purpose of ‘Redefining Packaging for a Changing World.’” 

Road and air transportation 
The Kaypal pallet benefits its customers, says DS Smith, since it is fully recyclable, ultra-lightweight (3.5 kg), ergonomic, hygienic, economic and reusable. It has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions during transportation and is helpful as a compact solution for reducing environmental impacts.

DS Smiths’ Kaypal machine helps reduce transportation emissions and other environmental impacts.The pallet is an “ideal” solution for the road and air transportation of products, floor and point-of-sale (POS) displays, pallet boxes (bulk) or order preparation for retail logistics centers (interlayer pallets), explains DS Smith.

“The opening of our new Kaypal cardboard pallet production workshop in La Chevrolière will help our regional customers move toward a circular economy, and with sustainable packaging options that positively impact the reduction of CO2 throughout the entire supply chain,” says Laumonier.

DS Smith in the news 
The DS Smith La Chevrolière packaging facility was built in 2010 and employs 170 people.

“It is a state-of-the-art facility that houses a multitude of robots and machinery with full automated transfers. The DS Smith packaging solutions are distributed within a radius of less than 150 km and predominantly intended for customers in the food industry,” says Laumonier.

Last month, International Paper announced an agreement for an all-share takeover of DS Smith, following weeks of speculation.

Meanwhile, DS Smith signed a supplier agreement with Jonsac, a Swedish company that produces e-commerce bags from FSC-certified wooden raw materials, and partnered with Bioenzymatic Fuel Cells, a developer of fully recyclable smart tags, to investigate smart packaging solutions made from paper.

By Natalie Schwertheim