Fedex, Otter collaborate on shippable wine
Thousands of packages endure drops, vibrations, altitude changes and more each year at the Fedex Packaging Lab in Collierville.
Lab engineers and technicians test and design packages for a range of products, seeing if the packaging can hold up to Fedex transportation by air and ground.
“Our top priority is to make sure your product arrives safely,” said Tyler Kenney, package design and development manager at Fedex Services.
Twenty-one employees are based at the lab, with help from 19 engineers who work remotely. These employees typically work with customers shipping fragile or high-value
“Wine is tricky because there are so many different shapes of wine bottles,” Rachel Lee
Senior product innovation manager at Otter
products like electronics, medical devices and perishable goods, Kenney said.
One of those customers, Fort Collins, Colorado-based Otter Products, wanted to test a box designed to hold wine bottles while keeping them cool. Working with Fedex wasn’t uncharted territory for Otter, which ships solely through the Memphis-based logistics giant.
“We’ve always had a partnership with Fedex,” said Rachel Lee, senior product innovation manager at Otter. “Since Otter was started as a company, we’ve used Fedex as our shipper.”
Otter’s Liviri brand develops shipping containers that allow perishable goods like groceries to be delivered sustainably. Liviri debuted in 2019 with its Liviri Fresh box focused on meal kits and other perishables.
Liviri introduced the Vino box to ship wine last year after testing from Fedex, but Lee said 2021 is the product’s “first big year where we’re seeing interest and traction in sales.” Direct-to-consumer wine shipping has been growing at a much faster pace amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she added.
Lee said Liviri saw the wine industry as “a really good fit” for a better, more sustainable container because of the challenges in shipping wine. Wine needs to stay between 35 and 75 degrees to prevent spoilage, she said, meaning the industry doesn’t ship many bottles in the summer and winter.
“If you order wine in the summer, it likely won’t ship until October if you’re ordering from wine country, because it’s not a safe way to ship wine,” she said.
The Liviri Vino box is equipped with vacuum insulated panels that allow wine to stay cool even in the hottest months, Lee said. The panels and reusable ice packs provide five to seven days of protection, according to Liviri.
Lee said since Liviri wants its Vino boxes to last two years, it’s important for them to hold up to any bumps and bruises it could encounter while moving through Fedex’s shipping network. Prior to its 2020 launch, the box went through various tests at the packaging lab, including being dropped on all its different sides, to make sure it could keep the contents inside protected.
Fedex’s package testing services are for the company’s business account holders. Many of these tests are complimentary, with a fee being charged for more advanced testing, according to Fedex. The packaging lab tests between 4,000 and 5,000 pieces annually.
The lab has a bevy of testing equipment to fulfill its mission, including drop testers, compression and vibration tables, environmental chambers, accelerometers, 3D scanners, an altitude chamber and thermal imaging equipment, Kenney said.
“We also use a conveyor and slide system to help evaluate how efficiently the package can move through our sorting operations,” he said.
Fedex’s packaging team “provided design input and extensive quality testing” for the Liviri Vino box, Kenney said. During one test in which the Vino box was dropped on its head, some wine bottles were poking through at the top of the inserts that hold them, Lee said.
“Wine is tricky because there are so many different shapes of wine bottles,” Lee said.
As a result of the testing, Liviri made design changes to the Vino’s inserts so its wine bottles are held down no matter how the box is dropped.
Companies can purchase Vino boxes for their shipments or lease them, Lee said. The boxes are often used by fulfillment houses in California wine country, which purchase boxes for wineries to use on a per-use basis, she added.
Wineries ship the box with a return label, and consumers generally schedule a Fedex pickup for the box or drop it off at a Fedex location, Lee said. The box can also hold a bag, allowing the consumer to take the wine out of the box and hand it back to the delivery person.
“It was really important for us to work with Fedex and their packaging lab to make sure the contents were protected inside,” Lee said. “… It was a good back-and-forth partnership.”
Max Garland covers Fedex, logistics and health care for The Commercial Appeal. Reach him at max.garland@commercialappeal.com or 901-529-2651 and on Twitter @Maxgarlandtypes.