ModusLink Wins Fourth Consecutive Green Supply Chain Award

For the fourth year in a row, ModusLink Global Solutions™ Inc. (NASDAQ: MLNK) has been honored by Supply & Demand Chain Executive Magazine’s 2012 Green Supply Chain Awards. The Company was recognized for developing a creative and cost-saving package redesign for its client’s line of flash memory products.

In 2011, a global consumer electronics company and long-time ModusLink client requested assistance in reducing the amount of packaging material for its line of flash memory products, including USB and USB Mini devices, SD and Micro SD cards. This initiative was driven by both environmental and cost-savings goals, including reducing greenhouse gasses emissions, volume of packaging material, and logistics and shipping costs. With a completely redesigned package and an innovative approach to the product inserts and user manual, the electronics company was able to save money by eliminating excess materials and drastically reducing transportation costs. Specifically, the redesign resulted in:

• 50% cut in paper and fiber use and up to an 80% reduction with the smallest product
• 50% reduction in the amount of plastic used, while maintaining the integrity of the previous package
• 157% average increase in pallet density
• 45% reduction in shipping costs

Together, these improvements represent a 31% reduction in annual CO ₂ emissions, which equates to eliminating 74 metric tons of CO ₂ from entering the atmosphere¹.

“A key challenge that many companies encounter in their sustainability efforts is the difficulty that comes with changing business as usual,” said Lorcan Sheehan, senior vice president of marketing, ModusLink. “An example in this case was the entrenched belief that each product should be accompanied by a comprehensive product manual. Our packaging engineers worked to find an innovative solution that allowed for printing instructions directly onto the blister pack. We helped the client meet its aggressive sustainability goals by eliminating the separate manual, but also took into account the company’s need to ensure all necessary product information was readily available to consumers.”

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