DS Smith injects €15 million to automate corrugated board flow at Saint-Jean-de-Bournay

The margin in the corrugated packaging industry is increasingly won or lost between the machines, not just on them. Recognizing this operational reality, DS Smith has committed nearly €15 million to modernize its Saint-Jean-de-Bournay facility in the Isère region of France. The centerpiece of this capital expenditure is a €5 million allocation dedicated entirely to intralogistics, replacing traditional forklift traffic with autonomous conveyors and a robotic warehouse system.

Now operating under the umbrella of International Paper following the completion of their merger in early 2025, the Saint-Jean-de-Bournay plant is a critical node in the company's southeastern French network. The facility produces approximately 65,000 tons of corrugated board annually, generated entirely from recycled paper, and reported a turnover of €77 million in 2025. However, handling that volume efficiently requires minimizing manual touchpoints between the corrugator and the converting lines.

Eliminating internal bottlenecks

The €5 million intralogistics upgrade fundamentally changes how work-in-progress (WIP) board moves across the 3,000-square-meter production floor. By deploying a network of autonomous blue conveyor belts and a robotic storage buffer, the plant automates the transfer of corrugated stacks between production stages. This setup reduces board damage caused by manual handling, cuts internal transport costs, and ensures a continuous, paced feed to the die-cutters and flexo folder gluers.

Emmanuel Alriq, the site director at Saint-Jean-de-Bournay, emphasizes that the investment is directly tied to customer responsiveness. The plant serves a tight geographic radius of 200 to 300 kilometers—a deliberate strategy to maintain both economic and ecological viability. With 85% of its output destined for the demanding food and beverage sector, the facility must accommodate highly variable order profiles, from standard transit cases to complex, high-quality printed retail-ready packaging.

The industrial logic of automated flow

This modernization reflects a broader shift within the European corrugated sector. As converting machinery reaches its mechanical speed limits, plant directors are turning their attention to the spaces between the equipment. Automated WIP storage and autonomous conveyors prevent the corrugator from being throttled by downstream bottlenecks and keep converting lines from starving due to forklift delays.

For International Paper, optimizing the legacy DS Smith assets in Europe means standardizing these high-efficiency material flows. The Saint-Jean-de-Bournay project demonstrates that capital deployment in the current market is heavily skewed toward automation and labor efficiency. By removing the friction of internal board movement, the French facility is positioning itself to absorb tighter delivery windows and more complex packaging geometries without inflating its operational overhead.