A new platform for the traceability and management of reusable packaging can deliver savings of between 50% and 70% in packaging costs. This is the main conclusion of the pilot test of Ecophir App, developed by the Jané Morraja group. The platform identifies all types of reusable packaging used by companies, enabling their tracking and making it easier for shipment recipients to reuse them or channel them into waste management.
The project, coordinated by the Packaging Cluster and the INNOVACC Cluster (the meat and alternative protein cluster), has received support from ACCIÓ, the agency for business growth under the Department of Business and Labour, through €66,000 from the growth and strategic change aid programme. The pilot test to validate Ecophir App also involved the participation of three meat companies—Noel Alimentaria, Obach 1915 and Mafrica—as well as two companies from the packaging sector, Enplater and Font Packaging, with the support of Ecophir and Ecolignor.
During the pilot phase, participating companies registered more than 23,000 packages placed into circulation through the application, with a very balanced ratio between shipments and returns. Currently, 50% of the packaging has already been reused, while the remaining 50% is still in circulation. In this way, the reuse targets established by European regulations for the year 2030 have been achieved.
The direct involvement of the participating companies made it possible to introduce significant improvements to the application, including the implementation of report downloads for more advanced data analysis and for compliance with the obligations arising from Royal Decree 1055/2022 on packaging and packaging waste, as well as improvements to shipment planning modules aimed at facilitating day-to-day operations and decision-making.
The Ecophir App platform allows the tracking of any type of reusable packaging, whether primary (for example, the individual tray holding a product), secondary (the box used to transport several trays) or tertiary (a pallet transporting several boxes).
According to Carme Morraja, CEO of Jané Morraja, “we identified that new packaging regulations were creating a market gap. They require packers to track the entire life cycle of packaging, but this is very complex.”
To address this, they developed Ecophir App. “When a packer needs to place the product on a wooden pallet, they enter the application and record it with a reference before shipping it to the distributor,” Morraja explains. The distributor, in turn, “receives a shipment notification to accept the delivery and can reuse the pallet or send it to waste management, where the waste manager also receives the notification through the application.”
The traceability generated by Ecophir App “makes it easy at the end of the year to access the information that companies are legally required to report on how many packages have been placed on the market, how many are still in use and how many are not,” explains Carme Morraja. In this regard, she adds, “the platform not only facilitates compliance with current regulations, but also expands the information available to the company and allows real-time visibility of the location of its packaging.” Furthermore, she notes, “it helps optimise costs through the reuse of existing packaging and avoids the need to purchase new units. All of this contributes to reducing the carbon footprint and promoting the circular economy through the digitalisation of the entire packaging life cycle, involving all agents in the packaging supply chain—from the packer to the final holder and the waste manager,” she concludes.
Following the pilot test, the conclusions point to packaging cost savings of between 50% and 70% thanks to greater recovery and reuse, which reduces expenditure on new packaging. In this way, the project aims to consolidate Ecophir App as a solid and scalable solution for more sustainable, efficient and digitalised logistics, aligned with European and national regulatory requirements
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