ORIGINAL REPACK OY

Their core work

RePack is a Finnish company that makes reusable, returnable packaging for e-commerce — physical packaging that customers return by post after receiving their order, which the company collects, cleans, and recirculates. Their core innovation is not the packaging material itself, but the service layer around it: a "packaging as a service" subscription model where online retailers pay per use rather than buying single-use boxes. This makes sustainable packaging economically viable for retailers without upfront investment in packaging logistics. They operate at the intersection of circular economy business models and last-mile e-commerce logistics.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

RePack's H2020 trajectory follows the textbook SME Instrument path: a €50,000 Phase 1 feasibility study in 2015 to validate the concept of returnable e-commerce packaging, followed by a €1.78M Phase 2 implementation grant in 2019 to commercialise and scale the service. The early project had no recorded keywords, reflecting that it was still a concept-validation exercise. By 2019, their vocabulary had fully crystallised around "packaging as a service," "reuse as a service," and "circular economy" — language that signals a shift from a product company to a platform and service company. The trajectory is one of increasing business model sophistication, not technical pivoting.

RePack is moving toward positioning reusable packaging as a fully managed service infrastructure for the e-commerce sector, suggesting future collaboration interest lies in platform scaling, reverse logistics integration, and circular economy policy alignment rather than material innovation.

How they like to work

RePack has acted as sole coordinator on both of their H2020 projects, using the SME Instrument — a funding scheme designed for single-company innovation grants. They have recorded zero consortium partners, which is structural to this funding model rather than a reflection of isolationism. In practice, working with RePack means engaging them as a technology and service provider, not as a consortium-building institution; they are unlikely to bring a ready network of research partners but are experienced at navigating EU innovation funding as lead applicants.

RePack's H2020 participation involved no consortium partners, as both grants were solo SME Instrument awards — a funding format that does not require multi-party consortia. Their formal EU research network is effectively zero partners across zero countries, which limits partner-network analysis entirely.

What sets them apart

RePack is one of the earliest and most funded European companies to have built a commercially operational reusable packaging service for e-commerce, having secured both phases of the EU SME Instrument — a competitive achievement that validates both the technical concept and the business case. Unlike research organisations or packaging material companies, they own the full service loop: packaging design, logistics, cleaning, and reuse tracking. For a consortium or pilot seeking a real-world deployment partner for circular packaging infrastructure, RePack offers operational experience that most research groups and material suppliers cannot.

Highlights from their portfolio

• Reuse as a service
  The largest grant (€1.78M, 2019–2022) and the project that fully operationalised their packaging-as-a-service platform, making it their flagship proof of commercial-scale EU-backed innovation.
• RePack
  The 2015 Phase 1 feasibility study that started the entire trajectory — notable as the founding validation moment for the company's core concept under competitive EU evaluation.