Unveiling the true cost of damaged deliveries: £8 Billion in 2023

With Black Friday upon us, we shed light on the staggering scale and cost of damaged deliveries – a whopping £8 billion in 2023.

Our new research shows over 1 in 3 (34%) Brits expect to participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, and nearly half of the consumers (47%) reported receiving damaged goods from online purchases in the past 12 months. As a major provider of e-commerce packaging, we expect over 76 million boxes to be returned during November.

According to the research, the average

value of damaged products was £115 each for UK shoppers in the past 12 months.

On average, consumers opened around three damaged items each this year, meaning the total bill for damages amounts to a staggering £8 billion – the equivalent of 10 million iPhone 15s. This results in a lose-lose situation where shoppers face frustration, and retailers grapple with the complexities of processing returns. With internet sales constituting over a quarter of total UK retail sales, the stakes are high, especially as we approach the bustling holiday season.

Creating innovative packaging solutions to minimise damaged deliveries

We are actively working on packaging solutions. Our innovation and R&D teams employ cutting-edge impact-testing technology to stress-test packaging for delicate items. It's a simulation of the entire supply chain, assessing Drop, Impact, Shake, Crush, and Shock (DISCS) factors to enhance packaging resilience. The drop test has become a game-changer for fragile items like glasses, bottles, and ceramics. Before a product is deemed protective enough for use, it must endure 17 consecutive drops. Each drop serves as a roadmap, identifying areas on the box that need reinforcement for a safe journey to the customer's doorstep. The outcome? Our research and development teams have found that through clever design, there are ways to not only limit damage but use less material and do it all without plastic.

But we are not stopping there. Our R&D team goes further, attaching 'accelerometers' to packages to measure acceleration levels during transit. A typical online parcel experiences G-forces measuring up to an astronomical 50Gs. To put that in perspective, that's more than five times what would make an experienced astronaut lose consciousness (at 9Gs) and a whopping ten times more G-forces than the average rollercoaster ride (at 5Gs).

 To ensure that sustainability is built into the design of our packaging, we have trained over 700 of its designers to use our circular design principles, enabling designers to consider different stages of a product's lifecycle — including creation, maintenance, and recovery.

Behind the scenes - Methodology:

Curious about the numbers? The research, conducted by Opinium from November 3, 2023, to November 7, 2023, involved an online survey of 2,000 UK adults. The results have been carefully weighted to ensure a nationally representative snapshot.