A Denny-based product design engineer is looking to take the packaging industry by storm with his patent-pending solution for the small volume sender.
Jordan Smith, a 25-year-old Glasgow School of Art graduate, was inspired after working in the family haulage business. Frustrated by the number of packaging failures he came across, particularly wasteful packaging and damages, Jordan was eager to reduce waste and simplify the packaging process for the sender.
Jordan’s solution, which he developed during his time at university, is ‘pkt’.
“The concept behind ‘pkt’ was simply to make it easier for users to protect and package any item, regardless of the size and shape,” Jordan told Packaging Scotland.
“With ‘pkt’ it doesn’t matter what item you’ve got, you don’t need different sized packaging materials, different sized filling materials or tape. You just take a bit of ‘pkt’ and it tightly and quickly secures round the item and that saves volume waste, material waste and time. And through all that, it saves cost.
“The theory is it’s on a roll so a home user would keep a small roll in their cupboard, a large user will keep it in their packaging station, on a frame on a roll and just roll it down. It tears to size then self-seals to secure the item.”
Jordan’s business Oddity Innovations and ‘pkt’ concept have already received recognition; he won a Young Edge Award and £5,000 grant, was a Converge Challenge Top 30 finalist and has received an RSE Enteprise Fellowship.
“(The Fellowship) has been one of the biggest boosts to my business because it’s given me the support and the training to push this business forward,” Jordan said.
“The Young EDGE Award was a brilliant one for me to get because it’s allowing me to take it from these working concepts and develop it for manufacture, so I can do the large-scale UK trials, which are happening within the next few months.
“They gave me the funds to take it from this to a large volume sample for prototypes and that is the key next step.”
Jordan likened the initial version of his product to a padded envelope but said lightweight and heavyweight versions would be developed in future to suit different users’ needs.
“The important thing we’re working on is to make this one material so it’s easy to recycle. This is the plastic version but we’re also working on a card version. Both have to be essentially one material so the user can easily put it through their recycling system,” he added.
Jordan said his product was well suited to the expanding e-commerce market.
“This is really good for businesses that are small and expanding because it means they don’t have to buy multiple different products. They can just have one product and as their business evolves, this product can very easily suit whatever they’re sending.
“That’s a big benefit and it’s something that’s quite difficult to do with boxes, for example.
“You need to buy them specifically, whereas this is quite adaptable, so that’s a big thing for the users, especially in the expanding e-commerce market.
“Compared to a box, you’ve hardly any material waste (with ‘pkt’) because you’re using a lot less material. That’s the way we’re pushing more towards sustainability.”
Looking to the future of ‘pkt’, Jordan said he is currently seeking collaborators to develop the project.
He added, “In a few months we should get this first version out there, start building on that and once we get the traction behind that, we’re going to bring out two or three different versions of ‘pkt’. That’ll be the next two years.
“Beyond that, we’ve already got a couple of other totally different packaging concepts, so hopefully in a (few) years we’ll start pushing them.
“That’s the long-term goal – to work within packaging and logistics, pushing out simple innovations to the market.”
