TOCHIGI, Sept. 9 — Usuba Yokeijo, a poultry farm in the town of Mashiko in Tochigi Prefecture that sells eggs on direct-from-farm websites, improved its egg packaging to reduce breakage during transport, leading to an increase in repeat customers.
Working together with a materials maker, the farm developed a cardboard box with partitions that can carry and protect multiple 10-egg cartons.
After adopting the box, the egg breakage rate dropped from 5 percent to less than 1 percent, contributing to increased sales.
The farm started marketing on direct farm sales websites in April 2019 and currently registers on three sites.
At first, it received only a few orders a day and its monthly sales were less than 100,000 yen. But the sales gradually grew and the number of daily orders surged to 100 in March 2020 to May 2020, as stay-at-home demand rose amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Along with the increase in orders, the farm faced the issue of eggs breaking during shipping.
Breakage occurred for about 5 percent of the total shipments, and packages of three 10-egg cartons stacked on top of each other were particularly vulnerable.
In August 2020, the farm started discussing with a material maker and transport operator ways to solve the problem, and developed a new packaging method in 10 months.
The farm adopted a flat cardboard box so that the cartons can be packaged side by side and covered the top of the cartons with cardboard sheets that can be folded in to act as partitions inside the box.
It also changed the buffer material from bubble wraps to air cushions that fit better into gaps inside packages.
As a result, the egg breakage rate dropped to less than 1 percent.
The farm managed to obtain repeat customers and its sales on direct-from-farm websites expanded to 2 million yen a month.
“There are key points that you have to pin down in any business,” said Tetsuya Usuba, who heads the farm. “As for eggs, the key was to reduce the breakage rate.”
Usuba Yokeijo, a poultry farm in Mashiko, Tochigi Prefecture, uses a flat cardboard box with partitions to ship its eggs.