Ahead of Halloween tomorrow (31 October), the London-headquartered packaging giant said demand has increased by 25% for its Octabins – specialised eight-sided cardboard containers designed to hold up to 1.25 tonnes and used for transporting up to 85 pumpkins safely stacked on top of each other.

Octabins are made of recyclable cardboard, and designed with an octagonal shape, which is less likely than a square or cylindrical box to bulge, making them easier to fit inside trucks and shipping containers.

DS Smith expected to box up over 11 million pumpkins into 126,000 Octabins in the UK this year. The company said heavy rain in July and August created the ideal environment for the pumpkins to thrive, while a warm spell in September and early October hastened their ripening.

But the larger pumpkins have presented new challenges for the whole supply chain. Shipping of the UK’s pumpkin harvest is a short but intense period, which can start as early as the end of August, however 2023’s wet summer pushed back this year’s harvest.

This tight window meant growers have had to rush to ensure that the harvest makes it from farms to supermarkets safely.

Ross McGowan, pumpkin grower at Hatter’s Farm in Essex, said some of this year’s pumpkins are weighing in at 25 kilos.

“When they're that big, what they're stored or transported in can become an issue and the last bins I used were hopeless and couldn’t hold the weight to be double stacked.

“As a pumpkin farmer, you need something incredibly robust, but at Hatter’s Farm we also want something sustainable as that's really important to us, and to the families that come and visit us."

Joe Coote, pumpkin packaging account manager at DS Smith, added: “We’re in a race against the clock to get our Octabins bins to growers and retailers who have only recently realised they need extra storage for their giant pumpkins, and we are the only company in the UK who can turn around spookily-printed packaging in such large numbers, at speed, that is strong enough for these heavy crops.

“The result is that we’ve been flooded with orders. In the last two weeks alone, we’ve had to make and deliver tens of thousands more Octabins for retailers due to this year’s pumpkin size. It’s been a phenomenal season for us, and we have loved helping to get the UK's pumpkins to where they need to be.”