Not sure about you, but this week I received eight corrugated boxes of custom sizes from different companies, containing many different types of products and this new trend in my life seems to be mirrored with many others I speak to. While I have been receiving corrugated boxes for years, lately they are more customized and have a lot less bubble wrap and a lot fewer foam peanuts.

Today, most companies are using standard sized pre-made boxes. These are usually wasteful unless your premade box was designed for a specific use. Additionally, most companies have an assortment of pre-made boxes creating inventory obsolescence. Another common box type is the handmade box from large corrugated sheets, like those used for sign and display shipping, also known as “frankenboxes.” So, introducing custom boxes on demand has its advantages.

Creating custom corrugated boxes on demand isn’t a new thing, in fact Plymouth Packaging of Plymouth and Battle Creek, Mich., has been doing just that since 2003. However, since the time they introduced this offering, the market for custom-sized boxes has grown along with the growth of ecommerce sites and companies like Amazon. The estimated total of all corrugated boxes produced in the US is approximately 100 billion per year! In fact, the need for custom sized boxes has also exploded, with Amazon alone shipping over two million packages a day (including padded envelopes). Earlier this year WestRock, a global supplier of packaging materials with sales exceeding $15 billion, purchased Plymouth Packaging and their “Box On Demand” (BOD) business, along with an equity interest in Panotec Srl of Cimadolmo, Italy. Panotec manufactures the BOD equipment. Additionally, they acquired the exclusive right to distribute Panotec equipment in the United States and Canada to help address that need.