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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.
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