Lessons from Building the First Packing Control System

It took us almost five years to reach the milestone of 100 million packs processed. Back then, one billion felt like a fantastical goal. Yet this September, we surpassed it.

Each of those packs represents a more efficiently-packed box or mailer. Each helped operators save money, cut waste, and reduce emissions. One billion is more than just a milestone to celebrate; looking at the impact reveals something bigger. Packing is no longer a forgotten step in fulfillment, but a strategic lever with real impact on costs, sustainability, and customer experience that is leading to a change in our industry on how businesses think about packing.

Environmental Impact

Orders processed using Paccurate’s platform translates to 1,147 acres of corrugated cardboard saved annually and 7,274 tons of CO2 from corrugated alone.

To put that into perspective, that is the equivalent of taking 1,539 cars off the road for an entire year or matching the carbon absorption capacity of 6,617 acres of forest.

These results show the significance of better packing decisions. When companies take control of their packing, they not only reduce costs and waste, but they also move closer to meeting their sustainability goals, which will leave a lasting impact on the planet for years to come.

Why This Milestone Matters for the Industry

Environmental gains are only part of the story. One billion packs also represents a growing dataset that has allowed us to continuously improve the platform to better serve our customers. Every shipment processed feeds back into the system, giving operators better insights, smarter recommendations, and benchmarks they can measure against.

These datasets have helped us build the foundation of what we now call a Packing Control System (PCS). With a PCS, operators can plan, monitor, execute, and manage their packing operations easily, all within a single platform.

What We’ve Learned: Perfect Packing Requires Control

Reaching this milestone has reinforced that perfect packing cannot be achieved with a single feature or one-off algorithm. It requires a system that sits alongside WMS, WES, and WCS to manage packing with the same level of rigor as other parts of fulfillment.

Boxes and mailers are the only physical output of even the most automated distribution centers. Yet the software that governs them is often inflexible, disconnected from costs, and difficult to adapt. This leaves operators frustrated and unable to adjust to changes in materials, automation or consumer expectations.

Transportation and material costs continue to rise, tariffs erode margins, and customers are less tolerant of waste. To meet those challenges, packing needs a dedicated control system. We’ve spent the last decade building a PCS that gives businesses command over every shipment and ensures each order is perfectly packed.

Looking Forward

Processing one billion packs is a milestone worth celebrating, but it is also a starting point. Along the way, we have been fortunate to collaborate with some of the smartest people at leading brands, 3PLs, and technology providers. Together, we have shaped a product vision that did not exist before and created a new category of fulfillment software in the process.

The stakes are high for businesses and for the planet. Packing must be fixed once and for all, and one billion packs have made one thing clear: deploying a robust PCS is how operators can take control, cut costs, and dramatically reduce waste.

Here is to the next billion perfect packs!

-James & Pat