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CardPak Sustains Its Future Growth
August 1, 2008 By: Esther Durkalski Hertzfeld Paperboard PackagingThis Ohio converter adapts its traditional blister card business to capture a piece of the retailers' sustainability pie.
The shift by major U.S. retailers Wal-Mart, Costco and Target away from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) packaging and towards recyclable packaging will have a huge environmental impact, which is long overdue, critics say. Solon, Ohio-based CardPak, Inc. is helping influence that impact all the while sustaining its own future.
 Greg Tisone, CardPak vice presiden and general manager (left), and President Tony Petrelli are poised to lead the company on its green mission. |
CardPak was formed in 1965 as a spin off from American Packaging Corp. (Ampak) focusing on skinboard manufacturing. Nine years later it entered the blister card market, and by 1990, sales reached $10 million a year.
Not just once, but twice did natural disasters almost destroy the company. In 1994, flooding (almost 3 1/2 feet on the production floor) stopped production and in 1996, record snowfall collapsed the building roof and caused a fire due to the down power lines. The flooding caused $1.3 million in damage but CardPak lost no customers during the shut down. The snow and fire caused $12 million in damages and again, no customers were lost during the two-year rebuilding process.
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In 1997, CardPak installed a Komori printing press, along with a Bobst diecutter, in a temporary building at its original damaged location in Cleveland. In 1998, the company moved from its damaged offices to its current location in Solon. Shortly after moving, the company installed another Komori press and a Bobst blanker diecutter. By 2000, sales had reached $20 million.
In 2006, despite having more than $25 million in sales, the company made a strategic move for its future by adapting its specialty — blister cards — to take advantage of the recent Wal-Mart and other major retailers' environmental push. That year, CardPak hired industry veteran Tony Petrelli as its president and then launched its new EcoLogical Line of Packaging™.
In 2006, "we totally changed the corporate direction and strategy of this 41-year-old company," Petrelli says. "It really was a complete going 'green' of the entire company."
 Case Study: Costco |
By 2007, CardPak had become a member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition and an invited exhibitor at Wal-Mart's Sustainable Packaging Exposition.
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Today, the company employs more than 120 people, running three shifts a day, five days a week and on weekends as needed for surge capacity. The plant is approximately 70,000 sq ft on more than 6.5 acres. The company has two Komori printing presses, a Steinemann offline coater, three Bobst SP104-ER blankers, in addition to a digital proofing system and CTP technology.
Sustaining the Future
While the company still continues its blister cards, folding cartons and sleeves, clamshell inserts, skinboard and specialty displays, its EcoLogical Line of Packaging is what's pushing its growth. The two products, ClubPak™ and SustainPak™, are both alternatives to plastic PVC clamshells. A year ago, traditional blister cards were 80 percent of the company's product mix. Today, traditional blister cards are only 55 percent of its business mix, while last year, ClubPak and SustainPak products have gone from zero percent of CardPak's business — to now more than 35 percent and rapidly growing.
ClubPak and SustainPak products eliminate up to 85 percent of plastic material when replacing clamshells while SustainPak uses 100 percent recycled plastic and paperboard materials. In fact, with a direct comparison between ClubPak and traditional clamshells, ClubPak offers an average 25 to 35 percent reduction in packaging materials by weight. The company does most of its EcoLogical packaging for the cosmetic/personal care, hardware electronics and private label markets.
 CardPak's recent success comes from its ability to meet its customers' sustainability initiatives. |
"We really attacked the plastic clamshell market," says Dave Himmelein, CardPak's marketing manager. The clamshell replacement was targeted to club stores initially, but has been so successful that it is now used in other retail outlets such as drug stores and convenience stores as well.
 Taking Out the PVC |
The company has won six Paperboard Packaging Council National Paperboard Packaging Competition awards with both ClubPak and SustainPak executions for Costco's Borghese Collection of cosmetics (see Costco sidebar), GE's compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) and P&G's Oil of Olay cosmetic product line). These awards include recognition for the Innovation and Self-Promotion categories.
 In-house laser diemaking capabilities provides CardPak's customers with quick turnarounds and demanding detail for complex custom manufacturing. |
CardPak was also internationally honored at the Environmental Printing Awards in Toronto earlier this year. The company won a silver award for the Most Progressive Environmental Process (Printer) for its GE SustainPak product line and a gold award in the Most Progressive Environmental Packaging Project (Rigid) again for the GE SustainPak line. In addition, the Packaging Association of Canada (PAC) presented CardPak its Sustainable Leadership Award Certificate on Earth Day, April 22, again for the GE CFL project.
CardPak's products are 100 percent recyclable — a great marketing fact for those retailers looking and needing to improve their environmental scorecard. While this may be true for other board converters out there, CardPak's key is how well it has marketed (and trademarked) its processes.
That's where Petrelli comes in. Prior to joining CardPak, Petrelli was vice president, marketing and business development for Caraustar Industries. He also is the current chairman of the Paperboard Packaging Council (PPC). Petrelli has more than 25 years of packaging industry experience including prior management roles in sales, marketing, operations and business development with Packaging Corp. of America, Tenneco Packaging and Caraustar Industries.
He's obviously had the experience and expertise in how to market and grow businesses from his past positions, and now he's able to take the reigns to prime CardPak for its future.
Internal, as Well as External
In 2006, CardPak became ISO 14001:2004 certified to ensure their compliance with all standards and regulations for environmental management systems. The company also recertified itself in 2006 for its ISO 9001:2002 quality management system.
For the last year, the company has been training every employee in the concepts of lean manufacturing. The process, Petrelli says, is ongoing and consists of Kaizen, 5S and 6S, and value stream mapping, among other things.
The company has used sustainable and recycled materials in their plant improvements, which includes environmentally certified drywall and paint to recycled carpet and furniture. Within the last year, the company changed its plant lighting system to cut its energy consumption and reduced CO2 emissions by more than half. The company also has adopted a lean manufacturing strategy to lower its in-plant waste by more than 2 percent a month.
"The core of our efforts has been the development of credible and meaningful performance reporting," Petrelli says. "We focused on standardizing procedures and creating key performance measures like run and makeready waste levels; makeready and run times; speeds, downtime levels and utilization rates; run lengths; and unit costs."
 High-Visibility Packaging Market Growth |
The company also has developed a solvent-based heat-seal coating with its supplier that is EPA-approved and FDA-compliant called PakSeal™. The coating is the most effective coating for use with recycled blisters (RPET). The company hired an independent national testing firm to prove the benefits of its coating, which includes faster dwell times, greater bond strength and consistent sealing performance. In addition, it can be used on both heat-seal and RF sealing machines.
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Sustaining its Customers
CardPak's success stems from working directly with retailers and the major consumer products companies. Major retailers are specifying the ClubPak and SustainPak products and asking key brand product companies to contact us for packaging strategies, Petrelli says.
"As an example, Costco has become one of our largest customers," Petrelli says. "In addition to just specifying our products to the CPGs [consumer product goods companies], we are manufacturing packaging for Costco's private label brands and selling directly to their own contract packaging facilities."
That type of relationship with Costco has spread to its other customers as well. CardPak regularly meets with its customers and suppliers, especially regarding the Wal-Mart scorecard.
"We carefully track all of the components that make up packaging — chemicals, inks, paperboard — so we have an in-depth measurement for our customers to go back to Wal-Mart with," Petrelli says. "We are becoming a driver of change — within our company and hopefully for the industry as a whole."
