ModTek
www.modtek.net


Vicki Wilkinson and Shawn Borman decided to make labels the family business. The mother and son team both grew up in the label industry, accumulating decades of experience. Wilkinson got her start in the late 1970s, and Borman has amassed more than 20 years in the industry. ModTek started with one press, one rewinder, a platemaking system and the will to establish a successful business.

Today, Borman has taken control of the company, which has shown no signs of slowing down. “After many years working together – staying on even after the sale of the company – we both felt that it was time to move on, and we certainly had the experience to pull it off,” he says. “Following 12 years of solid growth, Vicki rightfully earned her way into partial retirement as I took over more of the daily duties. One year later, we agreed to a buyout, which allowed Vicki to fully retire and put the reigns solely in my hands.”

In 2019, Wilkinson retired after 41 years in the label industry. The company has certainly grown since its establishment, too. ModTek operates out of a 30,000 square-foot facility in Pennsauken, NJ, just a few minutes from Philadelphia, PA. The company runs a single shift with 25 employees between 6 am and 6 pm with flexible hours.

“We feel this gives our employees the opportunity to create a schedule that works with their family structure and still allows for a consistent work week,” explains Borman. “In order to be successful, all we need to do is what we say we’re going to do. This has been our mantra since day one. Keeping things simple – minimizing complexities into achievable tasks is what keeps the team tight.

“It’s obvious that in order to succeed you need strong sales and a quality product with reasonable lead times,” he adds. “Behind all of that, we keep a humble hierarchy. While we have procedures and lead people in place, accountability is only good if employees are invested in what they do. We prefer to distribute the sum of power and responsibility all of the way to the shipping department. Not all people subscribe to this philosophy, so it can be trying to bring in new hires. But when we find the right people, they tend to succeed and stay. We have a very low turnover.”

ModTek relies on six flexo presses that vary from water-based with a UV for final varnish to full UV and hot stamp. According to Borman, the goal is to convert all of them to UV LED curing over the next couple of years. The first press conversion is slated for completion by early 2021. The NJ-based converter also made the strategic move to invest in digital printing. With digital in his sights, Borman made the decision to partner with Dantex.

“We have been researching digital printing for many years,” he explains. “We converted a flexo press to digital (hybrid) about four years ago, and it really put us in a great place to capitalize on smaller production runs with multiple SKUs.”

However, that initial move really didn’t propel the company in the way it had hoped. The cost and durability just weren’t there for a lot of the markets that ModTek serves. Dantex’s UV inkjet technology represented another opportunity, though.

“We’ve been watching the UV inkjet sector of digital printing and believe that it provides the durability along with a costing structure that we need to grow with our clients,” states Borman. “We know from past experiences that Dantex is an extremely reliable vendor with strong technical support. Their platform uses a proven system with excellent quality. We should be installed and running in Q4 this year. Our sales team estimates that we will have a second shift on it by the end of Q2 2021, and we’re hoping to add a second system in 2022.”

Partnerships have fostered success at ModTek, says Borman. “We can’t succeed without world-class vendor partnerships. For that reason, we stay close with our reps and their engineers. The ones we work with all tend to have similar principles – ‘Do what you say you’re going to do.’ Dantex, RotoMetrics, UPM Raflatac, and Anderson & Vreeland truly partner with us and provide us with the support that we need to thrive. With the help of UPM Raflatac, we have been able to set up some unique programs that allow us to maintain a higher inventory level for our standard materials. This has helped us tremendously with our lead times, which has led to faster turnaround and stable growth.”

A few years ago, ModTek purchased Hybrid Software’s Packz prepress software and have added a seat since then. This has jolted the art department in regard to trapping and color separations. For order entry, the company has been using Label Traxx since 2013.

There is nothing basic about ModTek’s labels, either. A critical part of the converter’s success is its ability to engineer and manufacture value-added labels. Cold foil, hot stamp, multi-ply (up to five layers so far), embossing, scratch ‘n’ sniff, and folded coupons are some of the constructions that ModTek runs on a daily basis.

In ModTek’s infancy, it ran whatever labels it could. The company served a lot of brokers and the book of business was a bit scattered. The arrival of Scott Egan, sales director, almost 10 years ago changed all that. Egan was able to focus ModTek on manufacturers of a certain size and distance.

“We still served a lot of markets but now had a deliberate direction,” says Borman. “Over the past five years we have become more efficient with embellishments like hot stamp, embossing and the like. With that, we have turned our attention to the beer, wine and spirits markets. Also, with the competitive surge in digital printing, we have improved our prepress department using G7 principles and upgraded our plates to a very stable, high-quality platform. At this point, our 4-color process work is rivaling the quality of digital daily across all of our conventional machines. This bodes well in that we can shift our position from digital printing to conventional printing when production volumes go up.”

ModTek has also leaned on its partners to deliver green labels. The company boasts 660 solar panels on its roof with an output of 150,000 watts. With one electric vehicle already on the road and a second planned for Q1 of 2021, the company’s fleet should be fully EV by 2022. ModTek also anticipates having two EV charging stations – which will be available to the public – by mid 2021. Plus, UPM Raflatac has played a large role in ensuring the labels themselves are sustainable, not just the business practices.

“Printing is a messy industry, but with good partnerships we have been able to limit and even reduce our carbon footprint,” exclaims Borman. “Our waste generation has gone from a ‘small generator’ to a ‘very small generator’ amidst a doubling of revenue in the last six years. One of our largest vendors, UPM Raflatac, is a major contributor to our green initiative in that they have a fantastic recycling program for liner material, both PET and paper. The response from our customers has been overwhelming in our ability to retrieve liner material after application.”

For its efforts, ModTek has been honored with an environmental stewardship award. “We had a surprise visit from the Department of Environmental Protection a few years back, and after inspecting our facility and having an awareness of the printing industry, they put us in for the award. They have also been quite forthcoming with information to help us stay on the right path,” says Borman.

With success coming on multiple fronts for ModTek, what does the future hold? “World domination, one label at a time,” jokes Borman. “The reality is that the markets that we serve are becoming more and more real-time and on-demand than ever before. Customers need to have a cost-effective way of introducing new products without huge startup costs. This is definitely driving the digital side of our business. We need to continue adapting to smaller and smaller demands in order to ensure and maximize future potential. I would like to see the digital press manufacturers make an effort to future-proof their machines. The foundations of the equipment need to be sustainable through technology advancements. I believe it is irresponsible to build equipment that will end up scrapped within 10 years due to obsolescence. For these reasons, we are optimistically reserved when investing in technology-based printing equipment. We are still moving forward but responsibly.”

ModTek has seen growth from a large sector of its business through the COVID-19 pandemic, which bodes well for the future. The sectors that did suffer are starting to come back, and the company appears to be in the middle of filling that pipeline.

Borman  says, “The future is still being written, so all I can say is that we need to be respectful of our fellow employees and their personal space.”