The french company puts innovation and corporate social responsibility at the heart of its strategy. Henri Serre, commercial director of senior accounts, introduces the latest packaging solutions developed by Raja, which turned over 1.2 billion in 2021.

Tell us about your company?

Raja is a French family business. In 2021, it achieved a 1.2 billion euros turnover. We operate in 19 European countries. Our job is to have 12,000 packaging products, office supplies, hygiene and capital goods, stocked and ready to deliver anywhere in Europe within 24 to 48h. We have three distribution centres on French soil, 50 000m2, 40 000m2 and 18 000m2.

Who are your main clients?

Raja is fortunate to have more than 110,000 clients in France, and more than a million in Europe. The bulk of our clientele is linked to industry and e-commerce, including in the luxury, health, retail, industry and public sectors. Our clients vary in size, with some well known internationally, while others are smaller but big consumers of packaging and capital goods.

What are your latest innovations?

The main innovations are related to four essential products. This year, we launched recycled bubble wrap, replacing rolls of plastic bubble wrap with a product which is 100% environmentally friendly. The recycled bubble wrap received the packaging Oscar in 2021. We managed to trap and air bubble between two layers of paper, to create a roll of bubble wrap that is 100% paper and 100% recyclable. The second innovation is paper strapping which was hard to imagine not being made of plastic. Raja succeeded in creating 100% resistant paper strapping. We have also replaced the bubble envelopes, which are widely used for small products because they are very practical, for paper envelopes. We substituted the plastic bubbles with a honeycomb layer of paper, with the same rendering, which protects against shocks thanks to its bee hive honeycomb structure inside. Finally, our fourth innovation is stretchable pallet paper. We are use to wrapping pallets with plastic film wrapping machines. A year ago, we brought out an 80% recycled plastic film. This year we managed to produce a stretchable plastic film which is 100% paper and %100 recyclable. This product earned us the CSR Trophy from the office and digital companies federation in 2022.

Innovation takes centre stage at Raja…

We try to drive innovation forwards every year or month, by offering our customers products which help them work efficiently without having to change packaging and logistics processes, and by providing environmentally friendly solutions.

What are your projects?

We have many. But to summarise, given our volumes and presence in Europe, the objective is to work with our manufacturing partners and better engage with them so they can develop new products. We want to engage in more research and development to find more innovative solutions, more environmentally friendly. Then, with our volumes, we will offer them to our customers in order to develop these products. There is still going to be a lot of innovation on greener products and on labelling. The idea will be to communicate the environmental and recycling instructions on the product.