Inside Cummins and Unipart's drive to make reusable packaging the default

Cummins' Rob Newing and Unipart's Lucie Dobeer joined Automotive Logistics on the Red Sofa at Automotive Logistics and Supply Chain UK – a "deconstructed" version of the traditional format, as the host put it, opening up the "sofa" to seat two guests rather than one. Their subject was a returnable packaging partnership, and the part of it that costs the most: getting the packaging back.

Packaging makes up roughly a third of all waste materials worldwide, Newing said, and around three-quarters of Cummins' own packaging is still single-use. "We just want to flip that narrative the other way," he said – to 75% reusable.

Returning empty packaging to the supply base is, as Newing put it, "where the extra cost can come in." Across the UK, Europe and North America, Cummins owns the returnable assets; Unipart, Dobeer explained, runs the cleaning management centres – the "pit stop" – where containers are inspected, cleaned and stored, and their RFID tags read before re-entering circulation. On longer international lanes, Cummins has begun trialling leased packaging paid for in one direction – "the Uber of packaging," Newing called it – with the provider sourcing a return load near where it lands rather than hauling empties home.

Unipart brings 51 years in automotive and, increasingly, a stream of customers arriving with the same complaint: too much single-use plastic in the supply chain. Dobeer measured Cummins' plastic in "169 acres", and said the test was pace as much as principle: Cummins needed a partner able to match its volumes at speed.

Both frame reuse as a design choice, with the reusable option set as the default at the new-product-introduction stage and alternatives taken only by exception. And it need not work against the cost case. "Where there's waste, there's usually an opportunity to improve some savings as well," Newing said.

What both want next is a shared returnable network spanning more than one manufacturer – pairing Cummins' flows with other Unipart customers moving materials the opposite way. "We want to help other OEMs… because it saves cost, time, carbon – but most importantly, it is right for the environment," Dobeer said.

Newing and Dobeer cover the full story on the Red Sofa – press play to watch the interview in full.

For more on Cummins and Unipart's journey

For more on how Unipart approaches sustainability, packaging and localisation as a partner to the UK automotive sector

Newing makes the case that packaging can no longer be treated as a siloed, end-of-line concern