Stronger Together: A Collaborative Packaging Redesign that Cut Costs, Streamlined Shipping, and Elevated Safety

Building a Stronger System for Protection and Delivery

When this national packaging and supply-chain leader began sourcing specialty corner board and shipping crates domestically, they encountered unforeseen supplier issues that affected multiple points in their operation.

Their product required long, reinforced corner protection and precise crating to prevent damage during transport. But existing suppliers — both domestic and international — struggled to keep up with demand, delivering inconsistent shipments. Not only were these shipments arriving sporadically, but they came with quality control issues: costly product damage and safety concerns for the customer’s warehouse workers.

Every new load brought fresh uncertainty: screw heads puncturing crates, employees sustaining minor injuries while unloading and freight costs climbing because inefficient stacking wasted valuable space. The customer needed a packaging partner who could look beyond the symptoms and deliver a scalable, long-term solution.

Listening First, Solving Together

When the opportunity reached the Litco team, they recognized both the challenge and the potential. Meeting the customer’s expectations would require more than supplying a like-for-like replacement of their existing product: it would demand collaboration and creativity. 

Litco reached out to Millwood, their trusted partner, because together they could bring broader experience, production insight and engineering perspective to the problem. Working jointly with the customer, the two teams analyzed how the existing product was performing in use and what was needed to ensure greater consistency and strength. 

That partnership led to an improved corner-protection program, manufactured by Millwood and supported by shared process controls, including visual inspections and surface checks that ensured every unit met quality standards before shipment.

Once the product was performing reliably, the collaboration expanded naturally. Millwood and Litco worked with the customer again, this time to develop a custom crating solution that improved safety, increased shipping efficiency and reduced freight costs. By optimizing crate design for stacking and handling, the customer could purchase in larger volumes and move product more economically.

Today, Millwood manufactures the Flex Defender corner protection, and Litco builds the custom crates, delivering an integrated packaging system that’s safer, stronger and more efficient. Together, the companies model how collaboration — not competition — produces the most comprehensive solution for the customer.

Engineering Efficiency from the Ground Up

From the beginning, both teams treated the project as more than a product supply agreement: it was an exercise in process engineering.

Every element of the program was built for repeatable performance: standardized quality checks, defined communication channels and a proactive production schedule that adjusted to meet the customer’s delivery cycles. 

Millwood’s Lordstown facility manufactured Flex Defender components under controlled conditions, while Litco’s team used its crating division to design and build units optimized for transport and load efficiency.

The resulting solution allowed for 12 fully loaded units per flatbed, reducing freight cost by approximately 10% per unit and improving delivery consistency. The process created predictability for the customer and efficiency for both partners – a shared win built on accountability and design discipline.