Business Packaging
Practical ways for South African ecommerce businesses to reduce packaging costs — covering box sizing, lightweight fillers, bulk ordering, material standardisation, and courier rate implications.
Practical ways for South African ecommerce businesses to reduce packaging costs — covering box sizing, lightweight fillers, bulk ordering, material standardisation, and courier rate implications.
Packaging is a real cost for ecommerce businesses, and it adds up quickly once you factor in materials, labour, and the impact on courier rates. This guide covers practical ways to reduce what you spend on packaging without compromising on the quality your customers receive.
Oversized boxes are one of the most common sources of unnecessary packaging cost. A box that's too large requires more void fill to prevent product movement, increases dimensional weight (which affects courier pricing), and wastes material. Audit your most common order types and identify whether your current box sizes are genuinely matched to your products.
Most South African couriers charge based on actual weight or volumetric weight — whichever is higher. Reducing box size can reduce your effective courier rate per shipment.
Void fill adds weight to your parcel. Crinkle paper is a lightweight option that fills space effectively without adding significant grams to your shipment. Compared to heavier fillers like foam inserts or dense packing peanuts, paper-based fillers keep your parcel weight closer to the product weight alone.
For smaller, non-fragile items, consider whether a padded mailer can replace a box entirely — mailers are lighter and often cheaper to ship.
Per-unit cost drops significantly when you order packaging materials in larger quantities. This applies to boxes, tissue paper, crinkle paper, and tape. If your order volume is consistent enough to predict monthly usage, bulk ordering is one of the simplest ways to reduce cost per parcel.
Krinkle Paper Co stocks crinkle paper in sizes from 100g to 5kg. View pack sizes and pricing here.
Using too many different packaging materials — multiple box sizes, different fillers for different products, separate tissue and crinkle paper — increases complexity and storage requirements. Standardising your packaging around a core set of materials reduces waste, simplifies ordering, and makes packing faster.
Boxes and protective materials received in supplier shipments are often still in good condition. Where your brand standards allow, reusing these for outbound orders reduces material spend. This works better for B2B or wholesale shipments than for consumer gift packaging, where the unboxing experience matters more.
If you're ordering packaging materials regularly, it's worth negotiating on price — especially for consistent high-volume orders. Even a modest discount on materials you order monthly adds up meaningfully over a year. Building a direct relationship with your supplier also gives you earlier access to stock availability and lead time information.
Over-packing is a common habit that wastes material without improving protection. The goal is to prevent product movement inside the box, not to fill every cubic centimetre. Use our Crinkle Paper Calculator to estimate the right quantity of crinkle paper for your box size, which helps avoid over-ordering and over-packing.
Crinkle paper is very lightweight, so it adds minimal grams to your parcel weight. Right-sizing your box — which crinkle paper supports by filling void space efficiently — can reduce your volumetric weight, which is what most couriers use to calculate rates for lightweight parcels.
Void fill is any material used to fill empty space inside a box. It prevents product movement during transit. Using the right amount of void fill — not too much, not too little — reduces material cost and ensures your box size is justified by its contents.
For gift boxes and parcels where the unboxing experience matters, crinkle paper is generally more cost-effective and serves a dual purpose (protection and presentation). For heavy or fragile items that need firm cushioning, bubble wrap may still be necessary.
Add up the cost of all materials used per order (box, filler, tape, tissue, inserts) and divide by the number of orders packed per month. This gives you a per-order packaging cost to benchmark against and reduce over time.
Reducing packaging costs comes down to a few consistent habits: right-sizing boxes, ordering materials in bulk, reducing variety, and using the correct amount of filler per order. Small improvements across each of these areas compound quickly at volume. Start with the highest-cost item in your current packaging setup and work from there.
Enter your box dimensions into our free calculator and get a practical estimate for your packaging.