Top Three Questions Asked at Pack Expo East
April 30, 2018
Well, we’ve had a week to unwind and reflect upon the time spent in Philadelphia for the Pack Expo East show. Although we are veterans when it comes to events that are put on by PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, this was our first year exhibiting at Pack Expo East. We were excited to see what was in store for the east coast show experience. There were three common questions that we were asked as people visited our booth, and figured, many of you may be wondering the same things!
1. Where are you located?
Pack Expo East took place in our own backyard. As some of you may (or may not know), one of our plants is located in Downingtown, PA, a mere 35 miles up the road from where the show was this year. With the show being local to ourselves as well as many CPGs, it provided an ideal opportunity for the whole team to attend and have important packaging conversations face to face.
Inland Packaging has four facilities in North America. Our two original locations (including our headquarters) are located in La Crosse, WI. This is where we house a majority of our offset presses where we run our cut and stack and in-mold business, as well as gravure and flexo presses. Our Downingtown plant has flexo presses, where we run a majority of our pressure sensitive business as well as shrink sleeve labels. Lastly, but certainly not least, our fourth plant located in Neenah, WI. Similar to our Downingtown facility, we have an array of flexo presses that run flexible packaging as well as shrink and pressure sensitive. Our Neenah facility also houses our, most recent addition – an HP 20000 digital press.
2. Can you tell us about your flexible packaging work?
There was a great amount of traffic flowing through our booth at Pack Expo East and much of it lead to discussions around flexible packaging. This was no surprise, as we know how flexible packaging is one of the fastest growing segments in the industry. We had some great discussions with products of all sorts, which really shows the vast spectrum that we reach across these markets with this product type.
We were happy to chat about our flexible packaging product offerings. Our offerings include flat pouch sachets, stick packs, vertical form fill and seal pouches, horizontal form fill and seal wrappers and pouches, and stand-up pouches. Some of our core finishes include gloss, matte, gloss + matte finish combo, or even a soft touch over the laminate finish to the flexible packaging. It was exciting to show examples of what has been flying off our presses! It sparked some great conversations, and we’d be more than happy to share some live examples with you as well if you are interested. Simply click the “Request Samples Button” to the right, and we’ll get a fun care package in the mail for you right away!
3. Can you tell us about new innovations?
If I had a quarter every time we were asked this question… This is one of our favorite questions to be asked. Innovation is key to our business, as well as our customers so we always have it at the forefront of our minds. We filled our booth with some of our latest and greatest products to show off. One of our favorites was a new craft beer package from Trim Tab. This bottle utilized a unique tactile varnish on a metallic substrate, which provided great depth to the bottle on the shelf which really popped. We had on display some fun new flexible packaging products that are new to the market, which include things such as wipes packages which used flexible roll stock material, with a peel and reseal label.
Many of our innovative solutions start out with a customer or prospect asking the question “wouldn’t it be cool if…” or “can you do this? and it actually coming to fruition. The innovation process truly starts with your input, objectives, marketing challenges or pain points. We gather a group of some of our innovative thinkers to bounce ideas off of each other and really find that this is where concepts take shape while keeping your brand strategy at top of mind.
If you were able to attend Pack Expo East, we hope you were able to join us on the Innovation Stage for our presentation about “Digital Brand Protection That Your Marketing Team Won’t Say ‘No’ To”. Innovation is about pushing your packaging to do more. It was a full house at the Innovation stage, filled with product stakeholders who were gathered to learn more about digital watermarks. These watermarks provide brand protection without negatively impacting aesthetics and shelf appeal to consumers. If you missed the presentation and are interested in further discussion, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Through the years, Pack Expo events have continued to grow and provide new experiences for the Inland team, and this year was no different. We hope to see you this fall at Pack Expo International in Chicago, IL.
