LONDON – DS Smith, the leading fiber-based sustainable packaging company announces an investment of €6 million ($6.45 million) in its La Chevrolière facility located near to the city of Nantes in the west of France.

The investment has allowed the company to expand the size of the production space in La Chevrolière by 4,000 square meters (43,000 square feet) and has been made in response to an increasing demand for sustainable corrugated cardboard by existing and potential DS Smith customers in the region.

The new equipment includes a Bobst Mastercut 2.1 die-cut machine, and a cardboard pallet production line. A new 2,500-square-meter (27,000-square-foot) workshop is dedicated to the production of Kaypal cardboard pallets, with a capacity of 250,000 units, and a potential to produce up to 1.5 million pallets a year.

The Kaypal pallet is beneficial to DS Smith customers in that it is fully recyclable, ultra-light weight (3.5 kg/7.72 pounds), ergonomic, hygienic, economical, and reusable. It has potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions during transportation and is helpful as a compact solution for reducing environmental impacts.

The sustainable product 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).

Thibault Laumonier, Regional Managing Director, DS Smith, France:
“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.

The opening of our new Kaypal cardboard pallet production workshop in La Chevrolière will help our regional customers to move toward a circular economy, and with sustainable packaging options that impact positively on the reduction of CO2 throughout the entire supply chain. We are setting new industry standards in sustainable packaging and building a future that is more respectful of the environment that we live in.”

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 kilometers (90 miles) and are predominantly intended for customers in the food industry.