Advice from our team of experts on packaging

Our research shows that there are now almost 30 million Brits selling items via online marketplaces and with 8.5 million people parting with unwanted Christmas presents through platforms like Vinted and eBay in January 2024, there are no signs of the trend to packaging and sending unwanted gifts slowing down anytime soon.

To help you, we've pulled together a handy guide to packaging for our customers, to ensure parcels arrive in ship shape to their destination and full intact. What you're about to see is some packaging that makes it difficult for our network to process, so take a look at some of the worst wrapped parcels and what you can do to avoid making these mistakes.

Avoid wrapping paper faux pas

There’s nothing more exciting than tearing through wrapping paper at any time of year to get to your gifts. But, while colourful paper might bring a smile to your face, the easy-to-rip material may get damaged on conveyors as it travels through our sortation centres

Instead, consider placing wrapped gifts inside a padded envelope, a box, or adding additional layers of heavy-duty parcel wrapping paper

Tape, tape, tape!

Even the most robust packing materials can be let down by being poorly secured, leaving packaging coming apart at the seams

Consider investing in some strong packaging or duct tape to properly secure seams and boxes to avoid them falling apart.

Give your fragile items a chance

Your parcels go on quite the journey from collection to delivery. Fragile items that aren’t properly secured in their packaging or well protected may not make it to their destination intact. Any pointed or sharper items could also end up tearing through their packaging

Try using bubble wrap or corrugated cardboard to protect fragile or pointy items and make sure there is no empty space in boxes or bags where items can bash about when travelling from A to B.

Carrier bags are not your friend

We are all looking to make more sustainable choices, so that leftover carrier bag from your weekly shop might seem like the ideal candidate for parcel packaging. However, they often suffer from the same problems as wrapping paper – they lack durability.

Reusing intact packaging from your own online purchases is a great way to be more sustainable - just remember to remove or black out any old delivery information. Re-purposing shredded envelopes or bits of old boxes also make great filling to safeguard fragile items.

So, where is this parcel going?

Just imagine: you’ve packaged your parcel up beautifully, your fragile items are bubble wrapped and tightly secured, and you’ve covered all your seams in tape, only for it to fail to reach its destination because our scanners can’t read the label.

Make sure to stick your delivery label on a smooth, flat side that’s easily readable – especially for labels with barcodes. Labels that curve round an item, are creased, or pixelated are unlikely to be read by our scanners, potentially leading to delivery delays. If your parcel doesn’t have a flat side, think about how you can repackage your item. One way to guarantee your parcel has a good quality label is to select our Print in Store service where your local Yodel store can print your label for you.