Back in 1979 when Joe Elphick, president and CEO, and his partner (since retired) founded Colonial Carton Company (CCC) in New Jersey, the two probably didn’t picture a 72,000-square-foot facility in North Carolina, with an additional 40,000 under construction. They probably also did not foresee almost losing the company’s building and almost all its equipment after a fire. However, joining the Independent Carton Group (ICG) helped ensure that the company would not only rise from the ashes with some of the latest technologies available, but also that there would be no loss of business or productivity when the unthinkable occurred.
Having a contingency plan in place helped the company stay on its feet during a time of tragedy. Equally important is its commitment to develop strong, sound leadership while instilling loyalty in its employees. This has paid huge dividends during the company’s almost 30 years. “We always had a strong management team and great employees,” says Elphick. “We did not always have the best equipment.”
Ahead of its time
Colonial Carton’s first piece of equipment was a hand-fed Meihle diecutter. “[We] farmed out printing for the first two years,” recalls Elphick. The company leased its first 5,000 square feet in Garner, N.C., and later purchased property in Clayton, N.C., the site of the company’s present facility. Its first building was 15,000 square feet, with an additional 15,000 following two years later, and another 42,000 square feet two years after that. And, it is still growing.
The company employs approximately 100 people, who operate two KBA 40˝ offset presses (one 7-color and one 4-color), which are both equipped with the Qualtronic S System. It also has UV and perfecting capabilities. It recently purchased a Mark Andy press.
Its operating philosophy is to be employee-centered. “We believe you can only attract the best customers with the best employees,” says Elphick. “Therefore, we pay them well and every employee is on a performance-based bonus system. We want each employee to be a good business person.” All three shifts have monthly plant meetings. After the director of manufacturing explains monthly production results and how they negatively or positively affected their bonuses, the group will break into small team meetings to strategize on improving the next months’s performance.
Thirty years ago, CCC’s main thrust was printing short runs, a trend which today affects almost every converter in some way. “We found our original niche on small runs,” says Elphick. “We will never move out of that business.”
Trend recognition
Elphick states that issues CCC faces in its target markets are globalization, in-line inspection, and helping customers understand the total cost of a folding carton.
While many converters see globalization as a threat, Elphick has identified a reverse migration from going global to going local. “Globalization is great for a lot of commodities, but the value of having a local source of folding cartons—people that can troubleshoot, design, plan, and visit the plant is the part that’s been ignored,” reflects Elphick. He says that although globalization has taken business from converters, he sees a trend in which people are going back to the local plants, where a salesman can meet with packaging engineers, clearly understand a problem, and get a speedy result. “There’s a strong benefit to being close to the plant, and that was overlooked in globalization,” he adds.
In-line inspection is proving to be an important trend in offset printing, according to Elphick. He says that when the CCC plant burned down, he had an opportunity to build a plant specifically to address the needs of the pharmaceutical community. One of the problems the CCC team noted time and time again when there was a quality problem and if it had anything to do with copy, human error was to blame during a proofreading action of the job whether it was on the press or in plate making. “Something was always overlooked by the human eye,” he says. When mistakes occur, pharmaceutical companies want effective corrective actions that you can prove were effective months later. The in-line vision systems on the KBA presses and CCC’s gluer allow the company to eliminate the mistakes. “The Qualtronic S is taking a snapshot of every sheet at 18,000 sheets per hour, and will identify any deviations to the proof sheet that we put in place,” adds Elphick. “The glue machine is taking all boxes out, in process, that might have faulty glue lines or unreadable bar codes, which minimizes the amount of complaints and broken copy.”
In terms of the total cost of a folding carton, Elphick asserts that some buyers look at the price per thousand. “They might add the die and the plate and the tooling costs, but some don’t look at the cost of the carton when it’s delivered late, or when it jams up their equipment,” he says. “If that carton caused a customer to have their product go on back order, how much did that carton really cost that company? What we like to push in our company is the total cost. Our cartons will be [X amount of dollars] per thousand, and they’re going to be on time, and they’re going to work in [the customer’s] automatic process.”
Contingency planning
Joining the ICG proved to be an important decision when CCC’s plant caught fire, practically destroying all the company’s equipment and building.
The ICG is an association of 21 independently owned and operated folding carton companies with a mission “to help members provide exceptional products, service, and pricing to their customers.” The ICG’s supply assurance program is what assisted CCC after the 2005 fire.
The program calls for the ICG to arrange for backup production from its member companies in case of a catastrophe at another member company.
“I was awarded a contract from one pharmaceutical company with six facilities that were located in the United States and the Caribbean. I almost lost the opportunity because it wanted a contingency plan for what would happen if we burned down,” says Elphick. CCC was able to arrange with another folding carton converter to take on CCC’s business if a fire occurred. After the fire, this agreement proved its worth. CCC did not lose any sales or staff.
Lessons learned
CCC is eager to share its successes and how its employees helped achieve them. “I would hope that the industry can learn that successful folding carton companies are run with good employees [and by] having a strong management team that understands how to motivate the workforce with strong, sound leadership qualities. In our nearly 30 years of business, we always performed well; our customers remained loyal.” pP
- Companies:
- KBA North America
- Mark Andy