Building a packaging ROI case your FD will sign off

The case usually fails for the same three reasons. The baseline came from memory rather than measurement. The saving is a percentage with no denominator behind it. And the evidence belongs to the supplier, from an operation the finance director cannot see. None of those objections is unreasonable, and all are avoidable.

A finance director will ask four things: where the baseline came from and over what period, what else changed at the same time, whether the saving is cash or capacity, and whether it repeats every month or happened once. Build the case to answer those four.

You cannot evidence an improvement against a number you never took. Before a single roll changes, collect four things. Grams of film on a finished pallet: cut the film off three pallets — a routine one, a heavy one and an awkward one — and weigh each. Minutes per pallet, on a stopwatch, on both shifts.

Then pallets wrapped per month, from the system rather than an estimate, and failure over a defined period: damage claims, rejected loads and re-wraps for the last full quarter, divided by the pallets shipped in that quarter. Add your film price per kilogram, not per roll.

Write down the date, the method and who took each measurement. That page is what turns your figures into evidence, and what closes the conversation six weeks later when somebody asks whether the before-number was ever real, or whether the operation simply had a good week.

A trial that changes the film, the settings and the operator at once proves nothing, because you cannot attribute it. Change one variable. Toreto's own August 2026 wrap test is the model: one pallet, one machine, the same power stretch and tension settings from start to finish, the film cut off and weighed after every run.

It measured what a like-for-like comparison has to measure — material and holding force together. Solid 23µ film held 9.9 kg/sq in on 200 g at roughly €0.48 a pallet; reinforced 16µ Supersonic and breathable Aerosonic held 10 kg/sq in on 66 g at about €0.32; the cash figures move with film price and pallet size. Holding force is the control: a film that uses less and holds less has saved nothing.

For hand wrapping, the field version is the same discipline. Toreto's UK test took one pallet, cut off and weighed the film it arrived in — 181 g, two minutes — then rewrapped the same pallet by hand and weighed again: 151 g, one minute. Same pallet, same operative, one thing changed.

Survivors have a physical or documentary source: weighed grams, stopwatch minutes, the invoiced film price per kilogram, pallets shipped from the ERP, claims and credits from the ledger. If a number can be traced back to a weighing sheet or a system report, it will not be argued with in the room.

Casualties are percentages without a denominator, savings expressed as less waste with no unit attached, a supplier's case study from somebody else's operation, and an annual figure extrapolated from one good pallet. Sustainability belongs in the case, but only where it carries a unit.

Watch the unit itself. In Toreto's Hyper Wrap field test the film saving is 50% in metres, because the film is stronger and wider; the weight only fell from 181 g to 151 g. Quote the 50% without saying metres and the first person to weigh both films will conclude the case was rounded.

The saving is per pallet and the case is per year, so the multiplier is your own volume and nobody else's. Three lines, each with a source. Film: baseline grams minus trial grams, divided by 1,000, times your film price per kilogram, times pallets per month. On the measured in-factory comparison that gap was 134 g a pallet.

Labour: baseline minutes minus trial minutes, times your labour rate per minute, times pallets per month. In the UK field test that delta was one minute at £0.20. Recovered minutes are cash only if a shift shortens or a head is redeployed; otherwise they are capacity, and capacity should be presented as capacity.

Failure: baseline failure rate minus trial failure rate, times your cost per failed load, times pallets per month. If the trial was too short to evidence a new failure rate, put zero on that line. A conservative case that survives is worth more than a complete one that gets picked apart.

Most film changes are operating cost against operating cost. Nothing is paid back, because no capital is spent — the question is the cost per pallet and whether containment held, and both are already in the trial. Say that plainly rather than manufacturing a payback period to fill a template.

Where equipment is involved, payback is the one-off cost divided by the monthly saving, in months, using the cost you were actually quoted and the volume you actually run. The Hyper Wrap System is the case in point: it is sold as the hand-wrapping alternative to buying a wrapping machine, so the honest comparison is against that machine's capital cost, installation and maintenance.

Then show the pessimistic case beside the expected one, not only the good scenario. Halve the failure saving, use the low end of your volume, and show the number that survives. A finance director who can see the downside already modelled spends the meeting on the decision, not the arithmetic.

One page, in this order. The baseline, with how it was measured and over what period. The trial, with what changed and what deliberately did not. The per-pallet difference, split into film, labour and failure. The annual figure at current volume, with the volume stated. What is cash and what is capacity, kept separate.

Then the two sections most cases leave out: what would invalidate the result — a volume drop, a different pallet profile, a move in film price — and what you did not measure. Declaring the gaps yourself is what makes the rest credible. Finish with the ask, and keep every number traceable.