IN Brief:
- DS Smith's Tampere operation is the first corrugated packaging manufacturer in Finland to secure BRCGS Packaging Materials certification.
- The plant produces packaging for food and other hygiene-sensitive sectors, including corrugated boxes intended for direct food contact.
- Certification followed a two-year programme covering the production environment, quality assurance, and employee training.
DS Smith has secured BRCGS Packaging Materials certification for its corrugated packaging plant in Tampere, Finland, after a two-year programme covering the production environment, quality assurance, and employee training.
The company says Tampere is the first corrugated packaging manufacturing operation in Finland to receive the certification. The site produces packaging for food, pharmaceutical, and other hygiene-sensitive sectors, including corrugated boxes intended for direct food contact.
The certification is particularly relevant to food packaging because the converter sits upstream of the filling and packing operation but still forms part of the product-safety chain. A carton or corrugated case can arrive at a food plant apparently simple and finished, yet its manufacture has already involved paper and board handling, printing, cutting, folding, gluing, storage, and transport.
Where packaging touches food directly, contamination control, traceability, and documented process discipline become more demanding. DS Smith’s Tampere operation produces direct-contact formats including boxes used for fresh pizza, making the condition and provenance of the packaging material part of the food manufacturer’s own assurance system.
BRCGS Packaging Materials is built around product safety, quality, legality, and operational control within packaging production. Certification is awarded to an individual site following independent audit, so the Tampere approval applies to the factory and its defined processes rather than acting as a blanket endorsement of every DS Smith operation.
That distinction is useful when packaging suppliers are qualified for food production. Large processors increasingly expect converters to demonstrate how raw materials are controlled, how non-conforming output is managed, how hygiene risks are contained, and how finished packaging can be traced through production records if a problem is identified later.
Traceability is especially important where corrugated packaging is produced in large batches for high-volume lines. If a defect is linked to a particular production run, the converter has to identify the affected material quickly, while the food manufacturer needs enough information to determine which packed products used it.
A strong traceability system narrows that investigation. Without it, a relatively localised packaging fault can force a processor to place a much larger quantity of finished product on hold while engineering and quality teams establish whether the issue is confined to one batch, one shift, or a longer period.
The two-year programme at Tampere therefore addressed more than the audit itself. DS Smith says investment was made in the production environment, quality assurance, and staff training, embedding the controls required by the standard before the certification assessment was completed.
Training matters because formal procedures only work if operators understand how they apply during routine converting. Corrugated packaging production moves through several mechanical stages at speed, and errors involving board grade, print, glue application, contamination, or identification can become expensive once material has travelled into a customer’s packing operation.
The Tampere certification also has a commercial function. DS Smith says many international food and pharmaceutical companies require BRCGS certification from packaging suppliers, making the standard effectively part of supplier qualification for some accounts even where it is not a statutory condition for selling corrugated packaging.
A factory with independent certification can consequently compete for work that might otherwise remain closed, while customers can use a recognised audit framework instead of constructing a separate baseline assurance system for every converter they buy from.
Environmental requirements are advancing alongside those product-safety controls. The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation began applying generally in August 2026, increasing pressure on packaging producers and users to address recyclability, material efficiency, and waste prevention while retaining the performance expected from food packs.
Those objectives can pull in different directions. Lightweighting or changing fibre composition can reduce material use, but a revised structure still has to withstand converting, storage, transport, filling, and handling without increasing food damage or waste. Quality systems therefore have to control packaging changes rather than assuming an environmental improvement will behave identically on the line.
DS Smith’s Finnish business also brings a long manufacturing history to the programme. The company traces corrugated production in Tampere back to 1911, when Finland’s first corrugated factory was established in the city. The current operation now sits within the wider International Paper group following its acquisition of DS Smith.
Certification does not remove the need for customer-specific specifications or audits, and it does not guarantee that every future production run will be defect-free. Its practical value depends on whether the controls demonstrated during assessment continue to function when the plant is under normal production pressure.
For Tampere, that means maintaining the hygiene, quality, traceability, and training disciplines developed during the two-year programme while continuing to handle a varied packaging workload. The certificate is the visible milestone; the industrial test is whether those controls remain routine when the audit team is no longer in the building.
