Most ecommerce businesses spend a lot of time thinking about picking speed, carrier rates, and platform fees. The packing bench gets far less attention — and that's usually where the biggest inefficiency is hiding.
This post looks at why packing speed matters so much, how to calculate what it's actually costing you, and which packaging changes tend to make the biggest difference.
Why packing is the bottleneck most businesses ignore
In a warehouse operation, large wholesale orders take a long time to pick but palletising and wrapping can be partly automated. In ecommerce, it's the opposite: picking a single-item order takes seconds, but packing it takes much longer — and it's almost always manual.
As ecommerce order volumes grow, the packing operation grows with them. More packers, more bench space, more management overhead. Unlike picking, which scales reasonably well, packing tends to scale badly: the cost per order stays stubbornly high, or even increases, as peaks and troughs make it hard to keep a consistent team busy.
The result is that packing is often the highest labour cost per order in the building — yet it's treated as a fixed part of the process rather than something to optimise.
The real cost of a slow pack
Let's put some rough numbers to it.
Assume you pay a packer £12.50 per hour including on-costs. That's roughly 21p per minute. If your average pack takes 90 seconds, each order costs around 32p in packing labour. If you're shipping 500 orders a day, that's £160 a day, or around £3,500 a month.
Now imagine cutting your average pack time from 90 seconds to 45 seconds. Same output. Same headcount. Your packing labour cost per order halves — saving around £1,750 a month on that volume.
That's before you factor in peak periods, when you'd otherwise need to hire temporary staff.
The point isn't that these exact numbers apply to your operation — they won't. The point is that small reductions in pack time compound across thousands of orders and add up to real money.
Where time is lost on the packing bench
There are three stages to packing an order: making up the packaging, placing the product, and sealing it. Most businesses only think about the middle step. The first and last steps are where packaging choice makes the biggest difference.
Making up the packaging. A standard cardboard box (a 0201 style) needs its base flaps folded and taped before anything goes in. That takes 15–25 seconds per box. A crash lock base box snaps together in under 2 seconds — no tape required on the base. Over hundreds of boxes a day, that saving is significant.
Sealing. Taping a box closed with a tape gun takes 13–23 seconds. A peel-and-seal closure takes around 5 seconds. That's up to 18 seconds saved per order just on the seal.
Void fill. If your box is oversized for the product, you're adding time and cost to fill the gap. A well-fitted box — or a self-adjusting format like a book wrap mailer — eliminates this step entirely.
Packaging formats that speed up the packing bench
Crash lock base boxes. The base locks automatically when the box is opened — no taping, no folding. Our ecommerce box range includes crash lock options in a range of sizes. If you're still taping box bases, switching to crash lock is one of the fastest wins available.
Peel and seal closures. Boxes and mailers with a built-in peel-and-seal strip remove the need for a tape gun on the seal. Faster to apply, more consistent, and cleaner-looking for the customer.
Book wrap mailers. For flat and semi-flat products, book wrap mailers are one of the fastest pack formats available. Open, place, roll, peel, seal. No tape gun needed at any stage. No void fill needed. Experienced packers can consistently pack an order in under 30 seconds.
Size-adjustable boxes. If you ship products that vary in size, stocking multiple box sizes means packers have to think about which box to use — and often get it wrong, leading to oversized packs. A size-adjustable box can be scored and folded down to fit the product, reducing decision time and void fill in one step.
Poly mailing bags. For non-fragile products — clothing, accessories, soft goods — a poly mailing bag or paper mailing bag is the fastest pack format of all. Open, insert, peel, seal. Seconds per order, no box-making involved.
It's not just about speed — it's about consistency
Fast packing is also consistent packing. When a packing process is simple and well-designed, it doesn't matter whether you have your most experienced team in or a temporary worker brought in for peak season. The output is the same.
Complex packing processes — where the choice of box depends on the order, where void fill is measured by eye, where tape is applied inconsistently — create variability. Variability means occasional damage, complaints, and returns. Those have costs too.
Is your packing bench working as hard as it could be?
If you're not sure, it's worth doing a simple time-and-motion exercise: time 10 consecutive packs, end-to-end, from picking up the packaging to putting the sealed order on the despatch shelf. The average time, multiplied by your daily order volume and your labour cost per minute, gives you your current packing cost.
Then consider what that number looks like if you shave 20, 30, or 45 seconds off each pack.
We've been helping businesses improve their packing operations for over 20 years from our base in Coventry. If you'd like to talk through what's slowing your packing bench down and what might fix it, call us on 02476 611234 or get in touch online.
Related products: Book Wrap Mailers | eCommerce Boxes | Poly Mailing Bags | Paper Mailing Bags | All eCommerce Packaging