When Mid-Atlantic Packaging started more than 37 years ago, company president Allen Kanter recalls that industry standards and customer expectations were a little different. "It used to be you made a box and shipped it and that was the end of it, says Kanter. "If it was a little out-of-square, well it could still be set up and filled. If the edges were a little crushed, well that wasn’t a problem. If the flexo printing was a little haloed or the color was a little faded, nobody cared." In those days, most customers didn’t want to print in more than one color because the box was only for transportation. It did its job and was thrown away. The prevailing attitude was, "why pay for dies and colors you don’t need?"

As a salesman, Kanter used to encourage his customer to use a second color by pointing out that they could take two colors and make it look like three or four and really give the box some impact. Even if the box wasn’t intended for display, while the store was stocking the shelves the box was in the aisle for everyone to see. The extra color gave the product a little more impact. Eventually a major change in retail marketing led to the acceptance of Kanter’s multicolor printing philosophy in the corrugated industry.

In today’s market, the corrugated box must do more than protect the product in transit. Everybody knows about the sophisticated graphics requirements for packaging which acts as a sales tool in a warehouse or shopping club retail environment. Another new requirement of the club or warehouse store is that the package as well as the product must arrive undamaged, looking good and ready to sell. Warehouse clubs and discount chains simply don’t have the people or the time to cope with re-packaging damaged merchandise.

Allen Kanter describes how his company handled these changes. "Our strength has always been in design. We came up with some new designs to support major customers in their merchandising efforts in the new retail environment of super-clubs and major chains like Sam’s, BJ’s, Target, and K-Mart. We designed several pallet packs which folded in on themselves to give printing on the inside as well as the outside at no additional cost."

Mid-Atlantic is a supplier for multiple divisions of Hershey Foods. The company’s unique combination of abilities is both the result of, and the reason for, the Hershey business. "They have been a major catalyst for our company because they make us a better box plant," says Kanter. "The things they have asked us to do in response to their requirements have improved our efficiency and made us a lower cost producer in many instances. Our ability to deliver what Hershey requires differentiates us from many of the other box plants in the country. That’s why we’re enjoying their business."

Mid-Atlantic, for example, worked with Hershey, on developing a display package that solved a problem for the customer. Mid-Atlantic shares a joint patent with Hershey on what they call a "Display Ready." The package consists of a half-slotted lid over a bottom which goes out, joined together, knocked down flat and opens automatically in the filling hopper. When the product arrives at the warehouse store or club, the lid is removed and the package becomes the floor display for the product. The lid can then be used by the customer to carry the product.

Getting more involved with helping the customer make his package bright and eye-catching, especially in a relatively dark warehouse store setting, Mid-Atlantic was soon doing a lot of multi-color work.

"We bought a Ward 4-color die cutter a few years ago," recalls Kanter, "Then later added three more colors. This took the company into a new era of multicolor work. It proved so successful we bought a second Ward 7-color die cutter and installed it in December, 1998."

The modular design of the Ward machinery allows for later upgrades such as additional printing units. In fact, Ward offers a program called "ReWard" which takes advantage of this modular design to help the customer keep the machinery up to date.

The first Ward die cutter is a VerigGaphixÒ II, equipped with a mix of print stations including the WMS III blade metering system and the VeriGraphix Blade and roll metering system. The newer machine is a VeriGraphix DXC equipped with Pammarco Fiberlite anilox rolls. Both are equipped with a sophisticated ink management (pH viscosity control) system.

"We researched all the machinery out there and we felt that Ward offered the best advantage for us in what we needed to do. I like the tightness of the registration and the flexibility of being able to run in-line and die cut, while being able to re-initialize the board. You run seven colors then the computer recalculates the position and re-registers the sheet so you’re not out of register when you die cut."

"We have always found Ward’s service to be excellent. It was also important to us that they are able to maintain and upgrade the machines to help us get where we want to be. Also, we felt that they would be around for the lon term. That’s very important."

"With the Ward machines we can run 14 colors in-line, with die cutting, and re-register before die cutting and maintain very tight tolerances. I don’t know of any other plant that can run 14 colors in line. I mean we can run a job through both Ward machines and have 14 different primary colors. Or we can run 4-color process work and really do a fine job. Ward has been very cooperative in working with us to achieve the kind of printing we’ve been able to do. I’m very happy with the way they operate."

When they bought the second Ward, Mid-Atlantic took over a third building in the industrial park and installed the new machine in that building. Then they moved the first Ward into that building and converted the original building into a J.I.T. warehouse to support their customers.

Mid-Atlantic is highly automated. CAD systems in the design department are constantly updated, plant manufacturing control systems are automated, and sheets are moved by automated conveyors and smart cars from the corrugator to the finishing machines and to the strapper where they are picked-up and taken out the door.

At press-side, computerized color analyzers are used to insure that the customer’s color specs are being met. The automated ink kitchen mixes each color to the precise specifications, including the pH and viscosity required by the substrate, coverage, and color lay-down order. On-press a sophisticated pH viscosity control keeps each color in optimum balance for the job.

The graphics that Mid-Atlantic is doing are "Excellent and we’re still improving," says Allen. "We have a full-time training schedule involving all our employees on every shift. In that respect we’re an aggressive young display company with a very good reputation. I don’t mind spending the money to upgrade our capabilities if I can see the result on the bottom line. To me that’s the difference between a brown box plant and a display plant."

Keeping ahead of the industry’s demands for better brown boxes, more sophisticated display work and higher quality, multi-color printing meant moving into a different world, according to Allen. "We had to take our design lab which had been just a sample table, and convert it to a full-scale technical design lab. We had to get involved with mixing our own ink. We had to learn about the different inks, about the standards and what variations are acceptable, about how they perform on different substrates."

"The people who were used to running a die cutter with a couple of colors didn’t have a clue when it came to display printing and what was required. It meant reorientation for the crews. We sent people to Ward for that, including our supervisory people, and we learned. It was a slow process but the people themselves were very interested and excited about learning and about the kind of work we would be doing. It has given us all a sense of accomplishment when we’ve been told by our customers that some of our packaging design and printing has helped them bring in new business."

Of course today’s packaging market requires more than just high quality printing. Today even so-called "brown boxes" must meet stricter standards for product protection, and the proliferation of automated filling and packing machinery means that the boxes must meet tighter dimensional tolerances as well.

Because of this changing brown box market, Allen Kanter has made significant investments at Mid-Atlantic in non-graphics related quality improvements as well. "We’re kind of a hybrid, because we’re really not a brown box company, but we run a lot of brown boxes. The kind of brown boxes we run are very sophisticated and exacting because 99% of them go on automated equipment. While there are graphics issues to be addressed, it’s more the structure and dimensional tolerances of the packaging and how those brown boxes have to perform. We’ve spent millions of dollars to get board off the corrugator and through the finishing equipment here without crushing it. Why? Because of the compression. Our board has tremendous caliper and it comes off the corrugator like a piece of plywood."

Mid-Atlantic has modernized and upgraded their corrugator with 2 new Peters single facers with 10 minute cartridge roll change and a Peters double facer with sophisticated temperature control to minimize warp. A razorset slitter scorer from Marquip helps eliminates edge crush.

Allen Kanter and all of the employees take great pride in being a leader not only in packaging innovation, but in maintaining a safe workplace. Mid-Atlantic has been recognized by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the A.I.C.C., and the F.B.A. for their record of almost 7 years without an accident. In addition, the company has been presented with the A.I.C.C. "Safe Shop" award, presented every three years to the number one plant in North America.

Real-world testing is very important in today’s retail environment because the clubs and discount warehouse stores don’t have the time or manpower to cope with damaged packaging. Customers must be certain that their product and its display packaging will arrive intact. This is another area of their business where Mid-Atlantic has invested heavily.

In addition to the kind of testing lab normally found in a box plant, (equipment for testing Edge Crush, Pin Adhesion, Flat crush, Ring crush, Caliper etc.) Mid-Atlantic Packaging has a completely equipped dynamics laboratory capable of conducting real-world simulations of the shipping and distribution environment. Vibrating, impact testing, drop testing, everything needed to simulate the shipping environment in trucks, planes, boats and rail cars is found here. The lab has won designation as a certified testing laboratory by the ISTA (International Safe Transit Association.) This comprehensive testing is part of the overall package design service that Mid-Atlantic offers its customers.

"We got involved in that," says Allen, "When one of our customers requested that we have the ability to pallet test their packaging before it was distributed. We do a design based on what the customer is going to put in the package, then we actually take the product, package it, and certify it. We tell the customer what the style and structure of the box should be, how he should palletize it, how high it can be stacked, under what humidity conditions, all before he ships the product. Another way we can use this for the customer’s benefit is by working with an existing package to cost-reduce it by removing some of the fiber or changing the liner/medium combination and still maintain the required stacking ability."

In addition to testing the final package, Mid-Atlantic also tests incoming materials from their critical suppliers (paper, starch, hot and cold set adhesives) to monitor performance from raw materials through finished product.

Something which makes the company unique among independent box makers is the use of the SAVER (Shock And Vibration Environmental Recorder), an electronic device which the company can pack with the customer’s product, send through the normal shipping and distribution process, and recover upon the product’s arrival at the final destination. Data can then be recalled from the SAVER to document conditions found during transit, including temperature, humidity, shocks , vibration, and drop impact. The SAVER is so sensitive that it can tell the difference between drops and package tosses.

Because the SAVER also records the time of each condition, problems can be isolated and tracked down. Not long ago, a customer who shipped fragile glass products used SAVER to identify the source of continuing breakage during transit to one particular warehouse. The problem was traced to a missing plank in a wooden bridge on the approach to the warehouse.

Some time ago a key customer approached Mid-Atlantic with a request that the company become an ISO 9001 certified supplier as part of the customer’s own efforts at becoming ISO 9001 certified. Although the customer later dropped its own certification efforts, Mid-Atlantic found that the ISO certification process helped focus the company on systems and procedures that it finds necessary for customer satisfaction. Mid-Atlantic decided to proceed with the certification process and became ISO 9001 certified inApril.

Allen Kanter is quick to point out that Mid-Atlantic doesn’t just sell the customer a box . The entire process from initial design and pre-production testing, through after-sales follow-up and performance evaluation is aimed at giving the customer maximum value in his packaging. "The kind of service and the quality boxes we supply don’t happen by themselves. We have a lot of very talented and skilled people designing, testing, and manufacturing the package, then following up by going to the customer’s production line to make sure the package performs well." -- This is no small task when you consider that one customer might have twenty different case packers, each with its own peculiarities -- "And we’re constantly looking for ways we can make it perform even better."

With all of the talk about new technology, changing markets and new customer requirements, Allen Kanter reminds us that there is one thing which hasn’t changed; one part of the business that is essential, especially to the independent. "We’re in a service business," he says. "We work well under pressure. If a customer calls and says he needs a brown box the next day, he’ll get it the next day."