ReeR Safety Advances Sustainable Packaging for Machine‑Safety Systems
ReeR Safety’s long‑standing commitment to protecting people in industrial automation extends well beyond the design of its safety devices. The company has increasingly turned its attention to the environmental footprint of its own operations, examining everything from materials selection to logistics. The aim is straightforward: manufacture robust, reliable safety equipment while ensuring the entire product lifecycle reflects modern expectations of sustainability.
A recent initiative in this direction has been the redesign of the shipping packaging for ReeR’s best‑selling light curtains. Developed in collaboration with Smurfit WestRock Italia S.p.A., the company’s packaging partner of more than 15 years, the project has earned recognition in the CONAI Call for Ecodesign 2025, securing an award in the “Incentives for Circular Innovation – New Technologies” category.
Rethinking Packaging for Complex Products
The redesign focused on maintaining robust packaging to ensure the protection of ReeR’s EOS and Micron light curtains:
“Our safety light curtains have unusual shapes: they are narrow and vary in length, which can be up to 2 metres. Rethinking the packaging and trying to improve it was quite complex,” explains Carlo Pautasso, Technical Director at ReeR. “For this reason, we drew on the experience of Smurfit, our partner for over 15 years. The goal was to design packaging that was completely recyclable at the end of its life, and we achieved this by creating single‑material packaging.”
The shift to a single‑material solution and the replacement of plastic straps with paper alternatives, ensures the packaging is fully recyclable. Achieving this required a detailed review of production processes to maintain durability, traceability and product protection.
Smaller, Smarter, More Sustainable
Beyond material choices, the project also tackled dimensional efficiency. The packaging footprint has been reduced from 200 × 140 mm to 160 × 105 mm, a 45% reduction in volume. This seemingly modest change has a significant impact on logistics: more units per pallet, fewer shipments, lower transport emissions and easier handling for both ReeR and its customers.
The result is packaging that is lighter, more practical and more economical to transport, all without compromising the safety standards that underpin ReeR’s product range.
Sustainability as a Core Engineering Principle
For ReeR, the award is not an end point but a validation of its broader philosophy: safety extends beyond the operator and into the entire ecosystem that enables industrial automation. True innovation, the company argues, lies in continually reassessing established practices and embedding sustainability into every engineering decision.
The light‑curtain packaging project demonstrates how even incremental changes can deliver meaningful environmental benefits. ReeR intends to continue investing in this direction, driven by the belief that protecting people also means safeguarding the future.
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