As brands continue to move toward what they see as more sustainable packaging materials, collaboration between CPGs and their equipment suppliers has become an important element in achieving success. One recent example is a partnership between organic mattress company Naturepedic and its roll-packing machinery supplier, C3 Ingenuity, that enabled the company to switch from polyethylene to paper, eliminating 55,000 lb of plastic per year from its roll-packed products.
Based in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Naturepedic produces certified organic mattresses and bedding, which it sells at its 20-plus retail stores located across North America. Its products can also be found at more than 150 retailers nationwide, including Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, and Restoration Hardware, and can be purchased on its website and shipped direct-to-consumer. For all these channels, Naturepedic ships its mattresses, comfort layers, and mattress toppers rolled up and packaged in (until recently) a heavy-gauge PE wrap and placed in a corrugated shipper.
Shares company Vice President of Sales and Marketing Arin Schultz, as a certified organic company committed to supporting an organic, holistic, lifestyle, Naturepedic is always looking for ways to improve its environmental impact. “We especially have an obligation to the planet and to our consumers—and not to be too aspirational—to the world in general to do our part,” he says.
To deliver on these goals, around two years ago, Naturepedic began exploring alternatives to PE for its roll-packed products. According to Schultz, one option it looked at was biodegradable, compostable films. “It sounds good on paper, but none of them actually breaks down that fast, given the amount of film we end up using,” he says. “So it just made more sense for us, again, an organic company, to shift to kraft paper. It’s recyclable, it’s compostable. It’s literally as natural as we can get in terms of packaging.”
For this switch, Naturepedic enlisted C3 to create a combination paper and machinery solution—a development process that took C3 18 months to complete. One of the challenges was to find a paper that would hold, for example, a king-size mattress compressed into a 76 x 80 x 11-in. circle. “So they were working on formalizing a process to be able to hold all that pressure while using a kraft paper,” explains Schultz.
When it came to the machinery, Naturepedic needed a solution that would allow it to continue to operate its existing CF1396 compression folding system at the same speeds. It also wanted something that wouldn’t add additional manual steps along the way. C3’s response was to engineer an add-on for its existing roll-packing equipment. While Schultz didn’t supply details on the add-on, C3’s website details a new patent-pending hybrid mattress roll cage that can handle paper or plastic. According to C3, the roll cage provides perfect paper tensioning, a reliable paper cutting design for precision, consistency, and durability, a dependable paper feed system, and bead glue application that improves precision and allows for custom patterns. It adds that each bed rolled with paper saves approximately one pound of plastic from landfill.
Schultz says Naturepedic is eager to share the technology with other mattress companies. “We’re a very open and honest company,” he says. “We hope the industry goes this way. We get to wear the crown that we were one of the first, if not the first, to do this for a full product line. But if more companies can buy in, and we can help along the way, we’re more than happy to do that.”
Naturepedic began using the new roll cage and paper wrap in fall 2023 and according to Schultz, the new packaging has been a “resounding success” with its customers. PW
