ePac Flexible Packaging has worked diligently to provide brands of all sizes with access to high quality, custom flexible packaging. With the help of suppliers like Enercon and Nordmecannica, ePac is taking its business model international.

While the first operation opened in Madison in 2016, Joachim says the company envisions replicated facilities across the USA. The company identified the HP Indigo series of digital printers and Nordmecannica solventless laminators as key to filling the market need. Finding additional trusted partners, like Enercon, for mission critical applications, such as integrated corona treating for laminating, has proven critical for ePac’s scalability.

In only four years the company has expanded to 13 plants in the United States.

ePac’s team has focused on speed to market, with a pledge of a 10-15 business day turnaround for their customers. The ePac team recognizes this as part of their vision. Robert Schultz, director of operations in the Chicago plant, says, “We know a lot of our customers are family operations and they are depending on our fast turnaround for the livelihood of their business. That’s one of the reasons we strive to ensure the repeatability of our processes.”

With short turnaround times, the orchestration of the product moving through the ePac plants needs to be efficient and well timed. As printed films roll off the HP Indigo printing lines, they are loaded onto Nordmecannica solventless laminators. To ensure lamination adhesion, Enercon high definition corona treaters raise the surface energy of the films for proper bonding. With Nordmecannica, ePac is piloting a new laminator that will expand the company’s capabilities further. Meanwhile, ePac has taken advantage of Enercon’s latest power supply, the Compak Pro, which provides operators with a host of operating and troubleshooting features through an intuitive touchscreen interface.

Schultz says that reliable performance of the solventless laminator and corona treater is critical because if they go down or fail to add value to the flexible packaging product as designed, significant plant downtime can result. “We’re pleased to say we’ve never experienced any downtime due to the Enercon corona treaters, which is important because we have teams of workers ready for the rolls to come off the laminator to complete production.”

ePac’s director of continuous improvement, Jay Sniker, has extensive experience with Lean Manufacturing. He’s responsible for ensuring each new facility is properly configured and plant operators are properly trained. With more than a dozen facilities in operation, Sniker and his team have gotten better at replicating their success. “We really work closely with our vendors to ensure our operators have the knowledge needed to keep the operations running smoothly. For example, we rely on Enercon training webinars and in-person visits.”

Enercon has provided ePac with free training, webinars and educational materials that ePac uses to train their teams across plants and create standards.

The new business model has been successful, with international demand for ePac’s services. The company has an operation in Canada, a second plant opening in the UK and a new operation in Indonesia starting up. Standardizing on partner suppliers, like Enercon and Nordmecannica, who can deliver performance and support anywhere in the world, makes expansion go more smoothly.

Carl Joachim, co-founder and CMO of ePac, says, “It all began for me seven years ago as digital converting technologies began to take foothold in labels and packaging and brand demand fueled SKU proliferation. We studied the market and saw a connection between innovative new printing and converting technologies and the need for short run, quick-turn flexible packaging. Our vision was to create a disruptive model that would level the playing field for small and medium size brands in local communities and give them the ability to go to market with big brand presence.”