Product protection specialist and Bubble Wrap inventor Sealed Air has chosen AEB, a leading provider of global trade and supply chain management solutions, as its software partner. A combination of AEB solutions will streamline, accelerate, and secure Sealed Air’s customs processes, including export documentation, supplier management, product classification, and visibility – directly in SAP®.

Founded in 1960 by the inventors of Bubble Wrap®, Sealed Air Corporation is a global leader in food safety and security, facility hygiene, and product protection, and serves customers in over 175 countries today. Its portfolio includes widely recognized brands, including Cryovac® brand food packaging solutions, Bubble Wrap® brand cushioning, and Diversey® cleaning and hygiene solutions.

Sealed Air is managing a complex global trade and supply chain operations to meet the needs of a global customer base across various industries, including food and beverage, automotive, e-commerce, hotels, laundry, wholesalers, and more. This involves global trade challenges such as customs code classifications of over 150,000 products and parts, operating manufacturing and distribution across 138 facilities, and managing suppliers in over 90 countries.

Recognizing the potential for improvement and the need for changes to efficiently manage global trade transactions and meet continuously increasing growth demands, Sealed Air decided to implement new solutions to streamline its customs management and realize operational and regulatory cost savings. To master this ambitious goal, Sealed Air selected AEB as its software partner. 

Jean-Pierre Faivre, IS Partnership Manager at Sealed Air in the UK said: “Customs management is a complex area and compliance, quality, and efficiency are highly important to Sealed Air. We were looking for a powerful solution to manage both standard customs documentation as well as more complex areas. Creating operational uniformity and simplicity, establishing visibility and awareness, improving government relations, and optimizing regulatory record keeping were further important factors in the decision process. AEB’s portfolio addresses all our needs. Their comprehensive global trade functionality and the convenient SAP®-integrated product series fit our demand and existing landscape perfectly. Products and services integrate easily and are scalable on an international level.”

From AEB’s comprehensive supply chain and global trade portfolio, Sealed Air selected the best fit for its business needs and its existing IT landscape:

• ASSIST4 Export Execution – to standardize, automate, and accelerate the creation and distribution of customs documentation for international shipments.
• ATC :: Classification – for customs code assignments and automated product classification in line with the official Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) and material master data.
• ATC :: Origin & Preferences – to optimize supplier management, country of origin assignments, and the visibility and application of free trade agreements.
• ATC :: Visibility & Collaboration – as control tower to consolidate data from various systems and supply chain partners and improve visibility of shipments from order entry to final delivery.

Planned for different project phases of implementation, this solution will support more than 30 users throughout 6 Sealed Air sites across Europe and the US.

Jean-Pierre Faivre concludes: “Our international business is growing, as are regulatory requirements by global customs authorities, so we want to improve our global risk management and establish a successful and sustainable compliance program. At the same time, we expect AEB’s solution to support our aims to optimize resources, manage expertise constraints, and reduce manual and paper-based processes. At the moment we are focusing on implementing the various solutions in different project phases in partnership with AEB’s expert teams. We’re looking forward to the results once we go live – both from management and operations view.”