ePac Flexible Packaging, founded in 2016 as the world’s first all-digital flexible packaging company, just turned eight years old in May. From 2016 through 2022, ePac consistently grew 50-100% per year.

In 2023 ePac’s growth slowed, but units produced still increased 30% over 2022 as new customer acquisition remained strong. Today, ePac is an international company with approximately $200 million in sales. Since its beginning ePac has been focused on using technology to drive productivity and customer experience. The company is in the process of upgrading its digital printer fleet, which today stands at 58, to the new HP Indigo Gen 5 200K. This technology upgrade alone will increase productivity by up to 45%. Over the course of next 24 months all of ePac’s fleet of HP Indigo presses will be upgraded to the new technology.

At the center of ePac’s technology platform is ePacONE, a proprietary tool that connects all of ePac’s 58 digital presses and enables automated job routing and management for all 22 ePac locations. In essence, ePacONE is a conductor orchestrating job flow among all assets, as one virtual package printing platform.

ePac originally made the strategic decision to consolidate its US operations into 11 manufacturing plants, down from 15. In addition to its US operations, ePac footprint now includes three plants in Canada, and eight locations in Europe, Asia/Pacific, and Africa. ePac’s US footprint now includes sites in Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Austin, Cleveland, Chicago, Madison, Boulder, Los Angeles, and Portland. Consolidation, made possible by the company’s digital infrastructure, is now complete.

Another strategic decision has been to add new capabilities to ePac’s portfolio of products. A recent example of this is the addition of a new flat-bottom pouch machine from Totani that expands ePac’s offerings in the coffee, sports nutrition, and pet food markets.

According to Virag Patel, ePac’s CEO, “In our first eight years we were able to create a new market for small and medium sized brands, and build a technology foundation that enabled us to rapidly scale our operations, so our infrastructure is sound. We’ll serve 4,500 to 5,000 customers this year, and with that kind of volume workflow automation is critical to meeting our SLA’s. Our commitment to technology will position ePac for the next phase of growth and serve larger, more complex customers – serving brands of all sizes.”