Doubling our size and profitability
Every part of our operations is underpinned by our ambitious growth agenda. This award recognises those who continue to strive for excellence and ensure we are can successfully meet the challenges of our changing world.
From improving efficiencies, reducing waste and increasing capacity, to gaining market share and strengthening our products and services, these finalists have gone above and beyond to help secure our position as the leading provider of sustainable packaging.
Aschaffenburg Logistics Team: Thomas Stenger, Svenja Grandke, Steffen Kukla
Supply Chain / Logistics Manager and Logistic Administrators
Aschaffenburg, Germany, Paper & Recycling
In cooperation with DS Smith Recycling, DS Smith transport procurement, and supplier Integre, Aschaffenburg’s Logistics Team built a new rental fleet, bringing significant efficiencies and sustainability benefits.
They optimised round-trips between recycling hubs and finished goods customers, and the fleet trucks have also been used to cover emergency orders. The number of rental trucks increased quickly, following the positive response from our customers and the support from the Recycling team.
The actual financial income for Aschaffenburg was €562k at the time of reporting, but the fleet also brings impressive non-monetary benefits. The site is now much more flexible, ups and downs on the freight market are no longer a problem, and even last-minute call offs can be easily processed. The round trips avoid empty mileage and some of the fleet trucks provide an additional bonus reduction on CO2 by using LNG engines.
Manolia Bourou & Katarzyna Mazur
Subregional Logistics Manager & Regional Category Manager
Greece, Packaging & Poland, PS&P
Packaging Logistics Transport tenders have historically been managed by each manufacturing site. Although this model works at a local level, opportunities could be unlocked, and more value could be added to DS Smith by consolidating cross-geographical needs.
At the beginning of FY24, the East Region embarked on a journey to transform the approach to Logistics Transport tendering – moving it from local to a sub-regional approach with broader trade-offs when making vendor selection choices.
Through a strong collaborative approach between Supply Chain, Procurement, Packaging and Paper, Manolia and Katarzyna led the implementation of tenders across the South East, South West, North and Central (excluding Poland) sub-regions, achieving £2.5m of savings (4.5% of supplier spend) and 80% reduction in vendor count. They also implemented best practice contracts for all vendors and created a structured awarding approach and a standardised contract process that will be used as the template for global implementation.
It doesn’t stop there! This blueprint created by Manolia, Katarzyna, and the East Region team has the potential to deliver around £20m of efficiency savings across DS Smith.
Nicole Lopez
Account Manager
Reading Box Plant, North America, NAPP
With challenging market conditions and significantly reduced demand for boxes, our Reading box plant in North America was experiencing a particularly difficult period at the start of the financial year. Only worsened by some of their largest customers struggling through the effects of bird flu which impacted over 5 million chickens in Pennsylvania alone, the site was struggling to meet monthly budget targets.
It was during this period that our Supply Chain Manager, Nicole, took her own initiative to reach out to multiple prospects and current customers. Through sheer determination, Nicole secured three large opportunities, bringing in almost $7.5 million in revenue (approximately £5.8 million).
With capacities filled, our production teams pushed, and several production records being surpassed this year, her efforts – alongside the remainder of the Reading Sales Team – have brought new life into Reading. Beyond her role in supply chain, Nicole is the go-to person on site and is the personification of our DS Smith values.
Paper Sourcing - Buying and Paper Performance Team
Sophie Didelot, Rigo Mihaly, Olivier Paquin, Andrew Macphail, Annalisa Invernizzi, Gallileos Vasilis, Mark Ruf, Amanda Pelegrino, Ramneek Karra, Rickard Styverts, Clemence Erard, James Dargie, Lluis Avila, Chris Ward, Guy Lacey, Nick Britton, Roxana Dominteanu, Phillip Senn, Myriam Bembazzo, Silvia Crippa, Filippo Farinelli
PS&P, Packaging & Paper
Over 2023 and 2024, DS Smith faced a number of challenges related to the paper market and risks to paper supply, highlighting the importance of reducing single supply lanes to improve security of supply.
The Paper Buying and Paper Performance teams in PS&P facilitated a strong business partnering and cross divisional collaboration to respond to the market and create opportunities to leverage commercial benefits.
This remarkable collaboration between PS&P, Paper and Packaging resulted in the reduction of single supply lanes by 85% and brought commercial benefits over £43m to DS Smith. Together, they overcame supply disruptions and improved security of paper supply. These extraordinary results directly support DS Smith’s goal of doubling our size and profitability, and demonstrated in practice how to be responsive, find a better way forward and get things done.
