Finland-based paperboard company Metsä Board is firmly committed to sustainability and aims to be a forerunner in sustainability. The company plays a crucial role in its clients’ sustainability journeys, too, and is constantly challenged to come up with new packaging solutions that reduce carbon footprint, save materials, are lightweight and avoid waste and excess packaging.
Metsä Board produces 1.3 million tons of folding boxboard each year. That’s equivalent to 160 million cereal boxes per day. If it can make a 1% saving in paperboard weight, the saving is equivalent to 1.6 million cereal boxes per day – plus the associated reduction in transportation and emissions. By exploring every packaging possibility, the potential for sustainability gains is huge.
The process of finding an optimal sustainable packaging solution for its customers previously relied heavily on physical prototyping: samples were made, tested and reviewed by customers. This process was costly and time consuming, hampering clients’ ability to move quickly to meet rapidly changing customer demands.
Now, using the advanced simulation technologies that are delivered through Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform, Metsä Board can create virtual twins of innovative new packaging solutions, and work out how they perform in a variety of simulated environments. This enables the company to experiment with ease – and without the cost and time involved with physical prototyping.
What was typically a three-week process is now up to 85% quicker. “We are able to provide a response to the customer in a matter of one or two days,” said Markku Leskelä, senior vice president of development at Metsä Board. The Dassault solution is helping to advance Metsä Board’s sustainability ambitions too. “The circular economy requires a lot of value chain cooperation, and these platforms enable a systemic approach to design packages and reusing and circulating them into the circular economy loop,” Leskelä said.
Read the full case study to learn how Metsä Board is improving performance while minimizing both carbon footprint and cost.
Lindsay James is a freelance journalist and copywriter with over 20 years' writing experience. She is a regular contributor to Dassault Systèmes' Compass magazine.