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Partly cloudy skies. Low 61F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.

DS Smith Lebanon can create 300,000 boxes in an hour.

DS Smith is currently trying to expand its North American footprint. Most of the company is based out of Europe. 

Much of DS Smith's Lebanon facility is automated.

DS Smith Lebanon can create 300,000 boxes in an hour.

DS Smith is currently trying to expand its North American footprint. Most of the company is based out of Europe. 

Much of DS Smith's Lebanon facility is automated.

Tucked in the back of the Lebanon Business Park, DS Smith, a British multinational packaging company, is making some of the most well-known products in Lebanon.

The Lebanon facility is the company’s first box facility in the United States, as the company is trying to grow its American footprint. In his first trip out of the United Kingdom since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, DS Smith Group Financial Officer Adrian Marsh recently had the chance to visit the Lebanon facility and see the progress they’ve made since opening.

“It’s unbelievable, I mean, this is part of the whole investment in North America,” Marsh said. “This was a big plan to get this state-of-the-art plant up and running and it’s got all the technology in the world in it and to actually come and finally see it working was fantastic.”

Since opening the plant, and despite the ongoing pandemic, the DS Smith Lebanon facility has been a part of the company-wide 22% increase in revenue over the past year and a half.

Marsh said corrugated packaging, like the product the plant creates, has been in high demand in recent years.

“We’ve seen it a lot, and you’re seeing it in your own house as well. The growth in e-commerce that was accelerated through COVID across Europe and North America has been pretty significant,” Marsh said. “As a company, we’ve taken a leadership position in supporting our customers on plastic replacement.”

Single-use plastic packaging are goods made from fossil fuel-based chemicals that are disposed of after one use, according to the National Resources Defence Council (NRDC).

Plastic is a popular choice for packaging as it can be lighter, more durable and sometimes cheaper. The NRDC says since the 1950s, around 8.3 billion metric tons of plastics have been produced with half of that being in the past 15 years alone.

Marsh said corrugated packaging material is fully recyclable, as plastics are not.

“We have a closed loop system where it gets collected, recycled and then comes back into the mix again,” Marsh explained.

The Lebanon facility can produce 300,000 corrugated boxes in one hour and more than one billion feet in a year, Marsh said.

As more and more companies think about their environmental impact when they creating packaging for their products, DS Smith in Lebanon and overseas can provide them with more sustainable options.

As the United States becomes more sustainability-minded and steps away from non-recyclable packaging materials, Marsh said the plant in Lebanon will be ahead of the curve in being able to create such packaging.

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