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30th Nov 2021
They say good things come in small packages and that’s certainly true when it comes to our DuoOptipac mailing bag, which received a Queen’s Awards for Enterprise in 2020 and was celebrated at a royal reception to celebrate the 2020 and 2021 Queen’s Awards winners held at Windsor Castle earlier this month.
Hosted by The Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal, an incredible 205 companies were represented and celebrated for their contributions to British business in the categories of international trade, innovation, sustainable development and promoting opportunity through social mobility.
Duo’s brand director, Zoe Brimelow, was chosen to represent the team. Speaking about her experience at the event, Zoe said:
“I was delighted when I was asked to represent the Duo team at Windsor Castle. It was a great honour to receive the Queen’s Award last year but of course our celebrations at the time were somewhat muted. The event itself was fantastic, and it was wonderful to be in the company of so many representatives from the very best of British business and to celebrate our collective success.”
As soon as we were able to celebrate the team’s Queen’s Award success with the whole team we did so. In October this year, we were privileged to welcome Vice-lord Lieutenant Sharman Birtles to present our Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation to the whole team, and to see first-hand the processes involved in creating our mailing bags.
“It was a really proud moment for the team at Duo. We invented the DuoOptipac mailing bag based on feedback from customers on their escalating ecommerce fulfilment costs, along with demands from ecommerce shoppers for increased delivery options. The surge in ecommerce shopping habits throughout the pandemic has driven demand for the Optipac even further and we’re so pleased we’ve been in a position to provide this solution to so many customers,” explained Dale Brimelow, operations director at Duo.
He continued: “The beauty of the Optipac is not only the design, but that we can manufacture the mailing bags with a high percentage of recycled content without affecting the performance of the bag. Using our closed loop recycling process we collect post-consumer waste packaging from our customers, recycle it and use this to manufacture new mailing bags. With the continued grown in ecommerce globally, we’re currently evaluating the relevance of this product in other markets such as the USA and mainland Europe.”
The story of our DuoOptipac started with an idea that came from a talented team at our Manchester headquarters. Together they developed a new packaging innovation that would provide ecommerce retailers with a mailing bag that would create fulfilment efficiencies for their business and convenience for their customers.
Launched in May 2016, the DuoOptipac mailing bag features an integrated handle which lies snug against the body of the bag maintaining the original capacity but reducing the volumetric dimensions of the package. DuoOptipac’s compact design maximises space on the conveyor belt system, increasing throughput by 28%. The tac-down handle reduces the overall size of the package, reducing delivery costs on volumetric pricing without the requirement for any changes to the pick, pack, and ship operation. We like to call it the fulfilment warehouse’s secret weapon.
Since April 2020, we’ve seen a 67% increase in customer demand for the DuoOptipac mailing bag and have produced over 430 million Optipac mailing bags to date for leading online retailers including Gym King and Oh Polly.
If you’re a retailer and you’d like to find out more about the DuoOptipac mailing bag – get in touch with us today. Our team would love to help.