- Flexible packaging, bags and pouches
- Personal care components
- Release liners
- Functional films
- Corrugated solutions
- Industrial bags
- Barrier coatings
- Speciality kraft paper
- Sack kraft paper
- Containerboard
- Office and professional printing papers
- Product training courses
- Newsletters
- General terms & conditions
The Mondi Performance Lab
- International safe transit association certified
- AMAZON approved member of the APASS network
Our corrugated business performs ISTA standardised tests to ensure that your packaging is suitable for your product and protects it in your specific supply chain.
Ensure zero loss in the supply chain and in your customer base
Testing of your pack (product and packaging) eliminates the risk of product breakage and claims, and thus reduces costs, reputational damage and the overall C02 footprint. You also benefit from the certainty of packaging that meets your business partners’ and carriers’ requirements.
Data-based evaluation of performance tests gives a clear understanding of how your packaging or product copes with different types of distress. It also aids rapid problem solving by helping to pinpoint any performance deficits or weak points of a design.
The eCommerce has its own benchmark – ISTA 6, APASS
In order to provide the best possible support with e-commerce sales channels as well, the Mondi ISTA laboratory is also an Amazon approved member of APASS, the Amazon Packaging Support and Supplier Network. Which makes our laboratory a partner of choice for testing Amazon’s Tier 1-3 compliant packaging (FFP, SIOC and PFP), a market standard of the online marketplace to reduce packaging volume in eCommerce logistics.
Assessment or certification- we are here to help
Whether you need to provide a certificate or would like an independent assessment of your packaging solution, we are here to help you.
Our experienced lab staff works with a large variety of industries and will define the test specifics together with you, based on your individual inquiry.
They offer a short turnaround time for standardised test reports or specific certifications. By request, we can also offer improvement proposals such as more suitable board grade or design.
Lab services
Mondi ISTA certified packaging performance lab in České Budějovice in the Czech Republic (Mondi Bupak) offers the following tests:
- Clamp
- Vibration
- Drop
- Compression
Certificates and test reports
- ISTA 1 Series: Non-Simulation Integrity Performance Tests (A-D, G,H)
- ISTA 2 Series: Partial Simulation Performance Tests (C)
- ISTA 3 Series: General Simulation Performance Tests (A,B,F)
- ISTA 6 Series: Member Performance Tests
- 6-FEDEX-A
- 6-SAMSCLUB
- Tier 1 (FFP) ISTA 6-Amazon.com SIOC (A,B,D,G,H)
- Tier 2 (SIOC) ISTA 6-Amazon.com SIOC (A, B, D, G, H)
- Tier 3 (PFP) ISTA 6-Amazon.com Over Boxing
About ISTA 6 certifications
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What is APASS?
The Amazon Packaging Support and Supplier Network (APASS) was created to support vendors, sellers and manufacturers in certifying their products as Prep Free Packaging (PFP), Ships in Own Container (SIOC) or Frustration Free Packaging (FFP) according to the three-tier packaging standard introduced by Amazon. Through this network, Amazon provides a list of companies and labs that can help with testing, designing and supplying packaging in line with Amazon’s Packaging Certifications. The list is accessible to Amazon vendors.
By meeting these packaging standards, Amazon sellers and vendors will significantly reduce costs and new product registration time.
The APASS Network list is provided to Amazon sellers for their convenience only, so that they can more easily find ISTA certified labs designated as having the proper equipment and abilities to perform ISTA testing. Sellers who ship through Amazon are not yet obliged to use the APASS packaging certification services. If they elect to use these services, they contract with the relevant APASS members directly. The type of service will depend on your needs and packaging type (e.g. packaging performance based on maximum total weight, packaging performance with a specific product inside).
Mondi operates an ISTA certified lab in České Budějovice in the Czech Republic. As an official member of the APASS network, Mondi now offers its package testing services directly to vendors, sellers and manufacturers in compliance with Amazon’s certification requirements. In this context, Mondi also partners with brands to develop and certify packaging according to Amazon’s three-tier packaging standard while ensuring both the best possible product protection in the rugged e-commerce logistics chain and cost effectiveness in order to support brand growth.
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Tier 1 – Frustration Free Packaging (FFP)
Frustration Free Packaging is a packaging standard introduced by Amazon to facilitate the Amazon process, reduce environmental impact, enhance the customer experience, and achieve a minimal damage rate. Its key criteria are:
- Protect against damage (no additional prepping needed by Amazon)
- Designed to reduce waste (no overbox needed to be provided by Amazon)
- Recyclability (pack must be 100% recyclable)
- Customer experience (easy to open – product needs to be easily removed within 2 minutes)
- Predefined min./max. dimensions
Optimisation potential here includes the reduction of:
- packaging components
- volume of air shipped
- box-to-product volume ratio
Compliance requirements: ISTA 6-Amazon, SIOC
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Tier 2 – Ships in own container (SIOC)
The SIOC Amazon designation means there is no prep needed by Amazon– no Amazon box or overbox is required.
Optimisation potential here includes:
- readiness to ship without extra box
- ensuring adequate protection
Compliance requirement: ISTA 6-Amazon, SIOC
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Tier 3 – Prep-Free Packaging (PFP) or Over Boxing (OB)
The product is shipped in an Amazon box, but there is no other prep needed by Amazon. There should be minimal damage rates.
Optimisation potential here includes:
- ensuring adequate protection
Compliance requirement: ISTA 6-Amazon, Over Boxing
Corrugated Packaging expertise at your service
In our capacity as a corrugated packaging producer with a network of 20 plants in 5 countries, we develop and supply boxes to producers and retailers. We are widely known as a supplier of smart and effective corrugated packaging solutions to the European market. In addition, our experts evaluate other criteria, such as potential, that are not covered by standard tests.
Our ISTA lab works closely together with our experienced team of corrugated packaging designers, who understand the systematic verification process as an integral part of packaging development that continuously pushes the industry benchmark.
In new design or improvement projects our packaging engineers address numerous issues in order to reduce or entirely avoid costs and to ensure that your pack complies with the relevant regulations, certification schemes and sustainability requirements. The challenges include:
- developing packaging to optimise material usage
- protective performance and tamper-proofing
- pack process improvements, including the implementation and appropriate utilisation of high-speed packing lines in automated processes
- enhancing the customer experience
- optimal total cost balance
- evaluating options for combining standard retail and e-commerce pack functionality
- automation projects – implementation of new pack lines, output improvements etc.
- reduce environmental footprint of the packaging
- multi-material to mono-material packaging
- SKU reduction projects
- improve internal and external logistics, efficiency and cost base
Click here to find out more about our solutions and services.
Get in touch with our ISTA lab
The test set-up is determined in each case by your product parameters, packaging specification and supply chain. Please send one inquiry form per pack unit ( box and product). We will come back in due time with a quotation and timing, or will contact you via e-mail or phone in case of additional questions.