DS Smith’s Sustainable Packaging Solutions for Zalando
DS Smith is undoubtedly a trailblazer when it comes to sustainable packaging solutions, playing a central role in the value chain across sectors including e-commerce, FMCG, food and beverage and industrials.
Its partnership with Zalando, a leading multi-brand retailer for fashion and lifestyle, further illustrates its immense standing in the field.
Commencing from April 2025, DS Smith and Zalando’s contract is inclusive of the latter’s e-commerce and fibre-based corrugated cardboard packaging solutions for European products and is an extension of a long-term partnership.
This latest agreement allows the companies to continue working together to innovate and implement quality bespoke, sustainable packaging solutions for Zalando’s customer order and delivery hubs across Europe, including in Germany, Poland, France, Hungary, Sweden, Italy, the UK, Spain, Estonia and Switzerland.
Driving innovation
DS Smith and Zalando’s collaboration is anticipated to drive high-quality innovation in design and materials utilisation.
The former’s design teams are well-known for their unique circular design principles approach, using no more materials than necessary and using recycled materials where possible.
Their central focus is on promoting a circular economy to reduce consumption, waste and pollution by keeping products in use for longer, while ensuring sustainability remains at the forefront of planning and strategy.
DS Smith’s collaboration with Zalando is anticipated to provide a benchmark in excellence for the wider e-commerce sector.
“This new agreement will enable us to build on our research and development to date and continue creating some outstanding packaging solutions for Zalando’s e-commerce product portfolio across Europe,” comments Marc Chiron, Sales, Marketing and Innovation Director for the Packaging Division at DS Smith, which is FTSE 100-listed.
“We’re committed to ensuring our packaging offering is best-in-class and, as a company, we are pioneering in our outlook and shared vision of Redefining Packaging for a Changing World.
“This is a tremendously exciting opportunity to take our knowledge of Zalando products, production and supply chain processes to the next level.”
The Zalando ecosystem
Zalando is in the process of building the leading pan-European ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle ecommerce around two growth vectors: business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B).
In B2C, Zalando offers a quality multi-brand shopping experience for fashion and lifestyle products to about 50 million active customers in 25 markets. In B2B, Zalando is using its logistics infrastructure, software and service capabilities to help brands and retailers run and scale their entire e-commerce business – on or off Zalando.
On its partnership with DS Smith, the company’s Director of Logistics Sustainability and Packaging, David Fischer, adds: “DS Smith has proven to be a highly-valued, inspiring and dependable partner for Zalando and we’ve worked incredibly well together in recent years.
“Our focus is on innovation and leading the way with customer-centric, more sustainable solutions. We have a strong interest in developing high-quality packaging solutions for e-commerce and, as a leading player, our customers expect us to lead the way into a more sustainable future. We are very keen to set new standards for e-commerce and for Zalando in general.”
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