Case Study · 5 min read · August 2025
Case Study: Hemp Juice Cut Packaging Cost 25% — Without Breaking the Eco Mission
A hemp-wellness brand consolidated SKUs onto a single FSC carton system — lower cost while remaining 100% plastic-free.
Hemp Juice's founders refused to use plastic anywhere in their supply chain. That principle was easy at 2,000 units a month — and increasingly expensive at 50,000. Here's how a structural consolidation kept the eco-promise while cutting unit cost by a quarter.
Where the cost lived
Each SKU — tinctures, capsules, topicals — had its own bespoke FSC carton, its own die, its own MOQ. Six SKUs meant six tooling charges and six minimum runs.
The brand was sitting on 14 weeks of carton inventory across the range to keep MOQs economical. Working capital, not material, was the real cost.
Consolidating onto one die
We designed a single FSC rigid carton sized to the largest SKU, with internal paperboard collars that adapt the volume to smaller bottles and jars. One die, one substrate, one print run per artwork swap.
All barrier was moved into the primary container (amber glass, aluminium-lined paperboard tubes). The outer carton stays mono-paperboard and kerbside recyclable.
Results
Unit packaging cost fell 25%. Inventory weeks dropped from 14 to 4. Tooling charges across the range fell from six to one.
When two new SKUs launched in Q1 2025, they used the same die — adding a product to the range now costs only the artwork plate, not a full tooling round.