PackMail, which packages envelopes using cardboard ends and film wrapping instead of boxes, could immediately reduce the corrugated waste of mail production businesses by more than 60%, Heritage Envelopes said. 

The envelopes used in PackMail and the packaging format itself are patented. The firm said the envelopes themselves look like any regular inserting envelope and have been proven to run without detriment to the inserting process.

Heritage Envelopes chief executive Mark Sears said: “Our innovative boxless format is the biggest most influential thing in decades to help our industry reduce their waste.

“Customers and key partners are always looking for continual improvement and ways in which to reduce their internal operating costs to allow them to increase their profitability and also for ways to satisfy their environmental obligations to reduce their packaging waste.

“We believe that Heritage is at the forefront of our industry which is why we have invested heavily in the development of this product and in the machinery to produce PackMail."

The company said usage of the PackMail format would be beneficial to mail production companies and customers who supply envelopes to mail fulfilment facilities and use large volumes of inserting machine envelopes.

Sears said the format is also more compact, which means more products can fit on each pallet, and customers can therefore take in fewer pallets without reducing envelope volume. This releases storage space and means less pallets are being transported to and around customers’ warehouses.

“If you consider eight pallets fewer for every one million envelopes then imagine the logistics benefits for our clients on an annual scale and yet, it is a real benefit customers can use immediately,” said Sears.

“If for just half of the company’s mailing envelope production, our customers choose PackMail in future, that could equate to more than 50 articulated lorries or more than 350 tons of corrugated boxes which no longer need to be wasted by our customers and if adopted across the industry that could be ten-fold,” said Sears.

PackMail was first introduced to a select group of mail production customers last year and has been properly launched over the past few months in the UK, France and Germany.

The company said the cost of using PackMail is comparable to what customers currently pay for packaging envelopes but that the benefits and internal savings of using this format would cost them less in the long run.

Blackburn-based Heritage Envelopes produces more than 2.5 billion envelopes each year, the biggest proportion being inserting machine envelopes.