‘We wanted less footprint and fewer headaches,’ said Anika, operations lead at NordMove, a relocation marketplace headquartered in Rotterdam. ‘But we still needed boxes that survive damp garages and two stair flights.’ As consumer searches like ‘where can i find moving boxes’ spiked across their EU markets, shoppers were drifting to retail aisles and typing ‘**upsstore** near me’—even though NordMove had its own branded kits to ship. The company needed to make sustainability visible, practical, and measurable.
That’s where packaging print choices mattered. Flexographic long-runs were locking them into high MOQs and seasonal waste. The team asked a simple question: if Digital Printing on corrugated with water-based ink can hold up in the real world, could we move to on-demand, cut transport miles, and keep the unboxing experience clean and credible in Europe?
Company Overview and History
NordMove started as a marketplace connecting vetted movers across the Benelux region. Over five years, it evolved into a direct-to-consumer packaging line: flat-packed boxes, wardrobe cartons, and specialty kits sold via its web shop. The production mix skewed seasonal—peaking in May–August—and the legacy model relied on long-run Flexographic Printing on unbleached corrugated board. Quality was solid, but demand volatility meant pallets of slow-moving SKUs and end-of-season scrappage.
By 2023, the team carried 38 active box SKUs and another 12 seasonal variations. Branding was minimal—one color, low coverage—to keep cost per box predictable. But minimums were still stubborn. Changeovers ran 45–60 minutes, so NordMove stacked orders and over-produced. End-of-quarter audits showed waste drifting in the 20–25% range when you count obsolescence, misprints, and damaged partial pallets.
Customer service made the stakes clear. Shoppers wanted sturdy kits, clear instructions, and near-instant delivery windows. The company didn’t need luxury finishing; it needed flexible production, clean legibility on kraft liners, and the ability to localize print without babysitting plate changes in the middle of a moving season.
Sustainability and Compliance Pressures
The board asked for verifiable reductions in CO2/pack and a pathway to higher recycled content without compromising compression strength. Targets were grounded in Europe-focused constraints: FSC sourcing, an LCA boundary that included inbound substrate transport, and supplier declarations aligned with SGP principles. Food-contact rules weren’t primary here, but the company preferred Water-based Ink to avoid unnecessary solvent handling and to simplify air permitting in urban hubs.
Practical product needs added complexity. Specialty SKUs—like moving boxes for pictures—had to be light, rigid, and clearly labeled with orientation icons. Any print method had to maintain readable icons after abrasion in vans and warehouses. The sustainability plan had to live alongside real-world scuffs, pallet rub, and humid basements, not just hit a spreadsheet target.
Solution Design and Configuration
The turning point came when the team piloted single-pass Inkjet Printing on corrugated with Water-based Ink. They paired FSC-certified kraft liners with a lightweight pre-coat to stabilize dot gain on the rougher, higher-recycled surface. Structural files were reworked to share a common die line across three SKUs—including the popular banana boxes for moving—so print variants could be swapped digitally without retooling.
Print coverage stayed modest—mostly icons, QR codes (ISO/IEC 18004), safety instructions, and localized branding. The color palette was tuned for low-ΔE variation on kraft (3–5 ΔE by a practical press-side measure), acknowledging that muted colors actually reinforced the environmental message. An abrasion-resistant water-based varnish was added selectively on high-touch panels. For load-bearing performance, ECT and BCT testing confirmed the recycled blend held within a 3–5% variance of the prior spec.
On the commercial side, on-demand runs allowed week-to-week balancing. Variable Data tags tracked reuse cycles and supported deposit-return pilots in two cities. For benchmarking, the team compared their per-box cost against common retail print-and-ship options consumers recognize (many will compare prices to upsstore printing pages). Short-run branding held its own once inbound freight and obsolete stock risk were included. The final rollout included refreshed instructions and a dedicated specialty range that again featured banana boxes for moving, sized and vented for produce-like airflow in storage.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Fast forward six months. Line waste (including obsolescence) moved from the prior 20–25% range down to 3–5%. CO2/pack—calculated with the same LCA boundaries—dropped by roughly 25–30%, driven by lower overproduction and shorter transport legs to regional hubs. kWh/pack came down by roughly 12–18% as changeovers shifted from plate swaps to digital queues. Time-to-switch between SKUs fell from 45–60 minutes to 8–12 minutes. First Pass Yield stabilized in the 94–96% band once the pre-coat recipe was locked.
There were trade-offs. Colors remain intentionally subdued on kraft, and the team decided against full-bleed coverage to keep ink use and recycling streams cleaner. But user-facing clarity improved: icons on moving boxes for pictures tested better in dim storage lighting, and QR-based instructions cut support tickets measured week to week. Payback penciled out in 10–14 months depending on seasonality. If you’re weighing a similar shift, the biggest lift is change management—operators need time to trust the new workflow. And yes, customers will still search for familiar brands; we’ve seen posts that mention upsstore side-by-side with NordMove’s kits, which is its own kind of proof that brand clarity matters.
