European industrial packaging converter: Pricing excellence

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Automated packaging line applying tape to cardboard boxes on a conveyor system in a manufacturing facility.

Our client, a European industrial packaging converter serving a broad mix of end markets, applications and customer segments, faced sustained margin pressure despite relatively stable volumes. Pricing inconsistency, hidden cost leakage and under-recovery of key cost components across a highly complex portfolio of tens of thousands of SKUs reduced transparency into price and margin performance and created substantial unintended price variance. To address this, we developed a data-driven pricing playbook to identify and prioritise value capture opportunities. The programme defined initiatives that together generated more than $30M of EBITDA improvement, while also strengthening pricing governance, improving commercial transparency and establishing a repeatable process to sustain expanded margins.

Outcome 1: Developed a data-driven pricing playbook to identify and prioritise value capture opportunities across a highly complex portfolio, improving visibility into pricing inconsistency and hidden margin leakage

Outcome 2: Defined initiatives that together generated more than $30M of EBITDA improvement by addressing under-recovery, unintended price variance and pricing inconsistency across customers and products

Outcome 3: Strengthened pricing governance and commercial transparency, establishing a repeatable pricing process that reduced future leakage risk and enabled the organisation to sustain expanded margins

The challenge

Margin leakage was reinforced by a persistent gap between standard and actual realised costs. Freight, raw material and service cost assumptions were inconsistently reflected in quotes and customer pricing, leading to systematic under-recovery. Unintended price variance was largely driven by the structural complexity of our client’s business. Tens of thousands of SKUs, spanning multiple specifications and applications, limited the organisation’s ability to perform meaningful like-for-like comparisons across customers and products. A robust segmentation framework was required to consolidate SKUs into comparable product groups and enable true ‘apples-to-apples’ price analysis.

The approach

We developed a comprehensive pricing playbook structured across leakage analysis, product segmentation, price variance assessment, and leverage evaluation. Our leakage analysis quantified margin erosion from unrecovered freight, raw materials and service cost variances. Product segmentation consolidated around 25,000 SKUs into comparable groups, enabling robust like-for-like comparisons. Price variance analysis then identified customers receiving prices below expected levels for comparable products and buying profiles. Building on this, we introduced a proprietary leverage metric (the ‘Courage Meter’) to assess repricing potential based on factors such as relationship strength, order complexity and customer scale. These insights informed prioritised customer actions, pricing guardrails and governance mechanisms to capture margin improvement.

The impact

The programme outlined initiatives generating more than $30M of EBITDA improvement opportunity. Further, pricing governance and transparency improved materially, reducing future leakage risk. Following implementation, the organisation established a repeatable pricing capability, strengthening commercial discipline and enabling our client to sustain expanded margins.