Downgauge before you substitute

Material substitution is a project. It needs supplier qualification, line trials, artwork changes, sometimes new tooling, and a year. Downgauging is a conversation with your existing supplier about running the same material thinner.

One of those is dramatically cheaper, and it is not the one that gets proposed.

Why the boring option is usually available

Most packaging is over-specified, because the specification was set once against a worst case and never revisited. Routes change, pallets change, warehouse handling changes, and the gauge stays where it was set in 2016.

We have found 8% to 15% of material available on around half the packs we assess, with no change of supplier and no requalification. On one secondary pack it was 22%, because the original spec had been written for a distribution model the client stopped using in 2019.

How to find it

Test the current pack to destruction on the current route. Not to the standard — to failure. The gap between where it fails and where it needs to survive is the headroom, and headroom is material you are paying for and shipping.

Why we lead with it

Partly because it works. Mostly because it builds the case for the harder project: a client who has just taken 12% out of their material cost with a phone call has budget and internal credibility for the substitution that actually needs both.

It also means our first invoice is usually smaller than our first saving, which is a good position from which to have every subsequent conversation.