Swedbrand opens factory in Poland

‘We all watched the Suez Canal blockage with dismay,’ said Cornelia Oswald, head of sales worldwide at Swedbrand. ‘Added to the disruption in supply chains caused by the pandemic, this was a manufacturer’s nightmare. It makes our decision to open a plant in Poland look prescient, though none of us could have anticipated this convergence of unfortunate events.’

Oswald notes that while manufacturing lead times are similar between Asia and the new European plant, time delays associated with shipping are often excessive. For example, she reports that it can take as much as four to five weeks to secure a 40-foot container for shipping finished products to Europe due to shortages of empty shipping containers and then five to seven weeks for the products to arrive. 

‘Intra-Europe shipping has huge advantages by comparison,’ added Oswald. ‘We are talking three to five days to ship finished products by truck to most European destinations. That’s a time saving of as much as two to three months, providing brands with significantly more on-the-shelve time for their products to actually generate revenue.

‘Not only are we seeing a sharp increase in the cost of raw materials in Asia due to shortages and a peak in demand, but the transportation cost of a 40-foot shipping container has also increased by more than 500 percent since the beginning of 2021.’

The new plant in Gdansk is a highly automated state-of-the-art converting operation for premium rigid boxes. It is managed by Bogdan Putko, a packaging expert with 35 years of industry experience.