Culture, Tech, and the Economy Loom Large at PPC’s 2025 Spring Meeting

More than 200 leaders across the paperboard packaging value chain met April 23-25 at the Paperboard Packaging Council's 2025 Spring Outlook & Strategies Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. The collective goal was to look at the strategic and executional changes needed to strengthen and grow their businesses — despite uncertain economic conditions.

Lisa Pruett, president, packaging and label segment at RRD discusses the printing company's strategic approach to culture builiding. | Credit: PRINTING United Alliance

Culture as Change Management

A theme throughout multiple sessions was: Culture is vital to the success of package manufacturing businesses, and it should be engineered with the same rigor as other business strategies. Culture initiatives must be measured, iterated, and led from the top down and the bottom up.

No session embodies this mindset more completely than Lisa Pruett’s keynote, “Stabilize, then Strengthen: A Culture-Driven Approach to Long-Term Success.” As president of RRD’s packaging and label segment, Pruett has overseen the transformation of a once-floundering collection of plants into a cohesive $2.5 billion division spanning labels, packaging, and supply-chain services.

While the transformation was a success, Pruett admitted the early stages of the turnaround were incomplete. “Our numbers were up,” she told the PPC member audience. “We were being praised. People were excited! But our spirits were down.” RRD’s management came to the hard realization that financial stabilization wasn’t enough to build thriving businesses and teams. Pruett explained, “We needed to build something more enduring so that we were a place people wanted to work.”

That meant developing a “culture scorecard,” a plant-level framework that tracks retention, engagement, training programs, and volunteerism. Employee-led safety committees, inclusion councils, and apprentice programs were developed and monitored with the same rigor as throughput or waste reduction.

This rigorous approach to culture delivered bottom-line benefits. Pruett reported the new approach resulted in a 25% increase in revenue and a 28% increase in turnover across RRD’s North American packaging business in five years. (RRD is headquartered in Chicago but has locations in 30 countries with more than 35,000 employes.)

New Complexities for HR Management

Even companies with strong cultural intentions face a new layer of complexity in 2025. Jessica Rosen, partner at Greenwald Doherty LLP, delivered a sobering legal roadmap during her session, “Avoiding Costly Employment Lawsuits in Today’s Turbulent Times.”

Jessica Shpall Rosen, Esq., Partner, Greenwald Doherty LLP, discusses how to avoid costly employment lawsuits at the PPC 2025 Spring Outlook & Strategies Conference | Credit: PRINTING United Alliance

With AI systems making hiring decisions and DEI initiatives now facing federal scrutiny, employers must proceed with precision. “The biggest problem is when people just click a button thinking it will make their life easier,” Rosen warned, “and suddenly the company has new levels of risk they didn’t even know existed.”

Rosen outlined lawsuits already underway: class actions citing reverse discrimination, bias in AI screening tools, and disability discrimination from automated testing. The patchwork of city- and state-level laws complicates things further. From New York City’s audit requirements to Colorado’s algorithmic fairness mandates, HR teams can no longer afford to operate in isolation.

Her prescription? Proactive governance. “Get your lawyer, your HR lead, your tech people, your IT, your finance lead. Get everyone in a room,” she said. “This isn’t just an HR issue anymore.”

Collaboration as a Cultural Imperative

Paul Nowak, executive director of GreenBlue, connected culture to a broader imperative — cross-industry collaboration on sustainable manufacturing efforts. “What we need now is the courage to collaborate,” Nowak told an audience of package printers and converters and their suppliers, “to bring competitors and stakeholders into the same room and say, ‘What are we leaving for the next generation?’”

Imploring the audience to action, Nowak said, “You can’t afford to go it alone.” He warned that new packaging laws, including extended producer responsibility and eco-modulation legislation, require this collaborative mindset for industry-wide adaptation.

Nowak urged, “Choose collaboration over ego. Because fragmentation will cost you more than partnership ever will.”

Generation Wisdom and a Culture of Belonging

For Marie Rosado, president of Puerto Rico-based 3A Press, culture is legacy. In a deeply personal Member Spotlight, Rosado traced the packaging manufacturer’s journey from a basement printing shop in 1948 to a leading carton converter with 172 employees.

She started the heartfelt retelling not with a moment of victory but of rupture. In 1996, Rosado was unexpectedly fired from the printing business her family started. “It was devastating,” she recalled during her Member Spotlight session. “Not just because I lost a job, but because it felt like I’d lost a part of my identity.”

Rather than retreat into depression, Rosado chose to rebuild, but on her own terms. Within months, she and her brother Alex launched 3A Press with a single press, five employees, and a fiercely shared belief that values could drive growth and loyalty. “We didn’t have a lot of money, we had something better — clarity,” she said. “We knew the kind of company we wanted to build. One where people mattered, and where integrity wasn’t negotiable.”

That small startup evolved into one of Puerto Rico’s most respected folding carton manufacturers, employing more than 170 people and serving major clients in the life sciences and consumer goods sectors. And 3A Press’ story is still evolving.

“Everything you just saw,” Rosado said, referencing a video tour of 3A Press’ facilities, “that’s not the finish line; it’s only our foundation. We’re not just printing. We’re building something that lasts — on the pressroom floor, in our community, and for the generations to come.”

Rethinking Technology’s Role for Printing Companies

The conference program looked at technology both as a threat and a force for transformation. One message that was clear throughout both technology-focused sessions is that strategic thinking around technology can no longer be the lone purview of an IT person or department. All departments in a manufacturing business treat technology adoption as a business-wide responsibility.

Cybersecurity Isn’t Optional

Darryl Carlson, president of Royal Paper Box, delivered a session aimed at helping his fellow paperboard packaging manufacturers make cybersecurity a daily habit. Carlson started by admitting he once assumed a modest folding carton company wouldn’t attract much attention from hackers. That assumption was shattered.

Putting numbers to his experience, Carlson said, “We experience over 125 attacks a day on our Office 365 account, over 10 attacks a day on our website, and over 50 on our firewall. And we’re just a dopey box company in [Montebello] California.’”

His point: No company is too small to be a target. Many of these attacks are automated, indiscriminate, and opportunistic. Carlson emphasized the importance of technical safeguards and human vigilance and warned that a lack of cyber awareness at the executive level is increasingly a liability. Cyber threats, he said, should be treated the same as other safety risks. Although cyber threats are constantly evolving, they are also measurable, and some level of avoidance is trainable.

Carlson shared some of Royal Paper Box’s cyber threat training efforts, including monthly phishing simulations with humorous but high-impact results. Employees who click suspicious links are greeted with a red screen and a playful message. One such message: “You’ve been hacked! Just kidding. IT will be touch.”

The message is intentionally friendly, so employees don’t look at the phishing simulations as an excuse for more disciplinary actions. However, the message is also an efficient reminder that a single mistake, such as clicking on a malicious email, can cost the company millions.

From Anxious to Hopeful

In her high-energy, humor-laced closing keynote, Beth Ziesenis, a veteran speaker of PPC conferences, dismantled myths, demonstrated tools, and directly addressed the learning curve challenge presented by the quick evolution of AI and its implementation. When many in the audience voiced “AI anxiety,” Ziesenis offered this reframing: “You are the expert now, just by showing up. And your next step is to bring this conversation back to your team.”

To get the audience to an expert level quickly, Ziesenis launched several fast-paced live demos. In real time, she created 30-60-90 employee onboarding plans, customized songs to deliver the personalized edge that turns printed packaging prospects into printed packaging buyers, and even fake phishing attacks capable of stumping even the closest coworkers or family members.

Rather than promote AI as a futuristic novelty, Ziesenis framed AI as a present-day productivity accelerator. She encouraged conference attendees to begin their company’s AI journeys by identifying the most frustrating or time-consuming tasks and begin testing AI tools that offer specific relief in those areas.

Economic Forecasts in Flux

In a candid, sometimes sardonic keynote presentation, economist Chris Kuehl warned paperboard packaging leaders to buckle up for another year of whiplash. From shifting trade policies to capital investment rebounds, 2025 is proving to be anything but predictable.

“This has been an interesting year to be an economist,” Kuehl quipped during his virtual address. “Nothing shuts me up — not even bacterial pneumonia.” The economic picture he painted wasn’t exactly bleak; it was layered with nuance, risk, and opportunity. The key takeaway for converters is agility isn’t optional anymore.

One of the most volatile forces shaping business conditions at the time of the conference was the evolving approach to tariffs. April and May saw many changes in reciprocal tariffs proposed, but Kuehl noted one constant that wasn’t as impacted by those winds of change: The review and negotiation pattern is what Kuehl called “the first Trump administration model,” in which each trade situation is reviewed individually, and many exclusions are granted to companies that demonstrate economic necessity.

Kuehl warned manufacturing owners not to let tariff concerns divert their attention to a certainty coming across all industries in 2030. “By the end of the decade, every single Boomer will have reached retirement age,” Kuehl explained. “If we don’t train replacements, productivity will collapse.”

He emphasized what he believes should be especially troubling for manufacturers: the 2030 labor shortage is structural — not cyclical. Kuehl warned that even with generous compensation and automation, there aren’t enough skilled workers to fill all roles — especially in manufacturing. Spotlighting the disconnect between economic support and manufacturing development, Kuehl reported, “There’s a technical school in northern Wisconsin with 700 people on the waiting list for welding. They could train them if they had the space. But they don’t, because the funding never comes.”

His message to the employers in the audience? Don’t wait for national policy to catch up. Form local alliances with community colleges and vocational programs. Invest in on-the-job training. Create pathways for advancement that go beyond wage increases. “The most competitive companies,” he said, “will be the ones that train their talent, not poach it.”

And this brings us full circle to one of the first sessions at the PPC 2025 Spring Outlook & Strategies Conference, in which Pruett highlighted the vital role of team members and workplace culture in a company’s success. As employers in other industries risk falling behind by undervaluing the contributions of their team members, employers in the printing industry that rise to meet this moment — by valuing culture and training talent — have the opportunity to lead thanks to the meaningful, long-term career paths abundant within our industry.

Bonus Learning Opportunity

As you reflect on your next strategic move, remember PRINTING United Expo 2025 in Orlando will bring together the full spectrum of the printing and converting industries, including package printing, to Orlando this October. Packaging leaders looking to stay ahead can find educational sessions, segment-focused summits, and live demonstrations of the latest printing, embellishing, and finishing technologies. Registration is open now at printingunited.com