Brother Receives Technical Packaging Award at the Japan Packaging Contest 2024
August 28, 2024
Brother Industries, Ltd.
Brother Industries, Ltd. (President: Kazufumi Ikeda) today announced that it submitted its newly designed small and lightweight molded pulp cushioning material to the Japan Packaging Contest 2024, organized by the Japan Packaging Institute, and has won the Technical Packaging Award.
The Japan Packaging Contest, now held for the 46th time this year, aims to contribute to the development and dissemination of outstanding packaging and packaging technologies by evaluating entries from various perspectives and selecting excellent works. The awards are divided into three categories: the top prize, Japan Star; the Packaging Technology Award, given to works that enhance the functionality of packaging through excellent know-how; and the Packaging Category Award, given to works that significantly contribute to packaging streamlining and improvement. Each category includes around 10 awards.
The Technical Packaging Award, which Brother received this year, is one of the awards under the Packaging Technology Award category. This award is given to packaging solutions that technically excel in terms of protection, preservation, and functionality. Brother's molded pulp was recognized for achieving compactness and lightness while maintaining cushioning performance, thus reducing CO2 emissions during production and other processes.
Development Background and Features of the Award-Winning Work
In its business activities, Brother is committed to the sustainable use of resources, advancing the use of recycled materials other than plastics. To protect products such as printers, Brother has developed molded pulp made of paper as an alternative to plastic foam polystyrene. Traditional molded pulp had issues with increased size and weight necessary to maintain cushioning performance, leading to higher CO2 emissions during production and other processes. In response, Brother aimed to develop smaller, lighter molded pulp.
The newly designed molded pulp, which received the award, optimizes placement and shape, allowing it to efficiently absorb shock by being positioned only at the four corners of the printer's bottom and top sides. This design enhances durability while reducing size compared to the traditional design, leading to a reduction in pulp material used and a 33% reduction in molded pulp weight. Additionally, the smaller molded pulp allows packaging boxes to be reduced in size by 7%.
This reduction in the size and weight of the molded pulp decreases the amount of resources needed for production and, compared to the traditional design, reduces CO2 emissions by 33%. Moreover, the smaller packaging boxes improve transportation efficiency, further contributing to CO2 reduction.
Furthermore, whereas the previous design involved combining different shapes of molded pulp, the new design uses a shared shape for the bottom corners and a shared shape for the top corners, improving production efficiency and allowing it to be stacked more compactly during storage and disposal.
In developing the new molded pulp, Brother also utilized proprietary technology to simulate impacts such as drops, which reduced the number of prototypes needed. This shortened the development period by approximately 90% compared to conducting tests such as drop analysis with only physical prototypes, and also reduced the CO2 emissions associated with prototype production and other processes.
The newly designed molded pulp has been in use in Australia since March 2024 and is planned to be rolled out in more regions in the future.
The Brother Group will continue to engage in environmentally friendly initiatives across all aspects of its corporate activities, aiming to build a sustainable society.
