Selecting A Contract Packager

Contract packagers (or co-packagers) can offer expert, cost-efficient, practical solutions to help you initiate, organize, streamline or improve your packaging or packaging operations.

The secret is finding a co-packager who can offer the specialized services you need. Here are some important points to consider when selecting a co-packaging service:

• Determine, as closely as possible, the nature and scope of the problem to be addressed, and the specific problem or task that you would like the co-packager to work on.
• Consult this website to find professional co-packagers with the specific expertise you need.
• Identify co-packagers with the expertise you require. Conduct a preliminary assessment of each of the most promising and appropriate candidates.
• If you have questions about a candidate’s background, call and ask questions. The key staff at a professional co-packaging service will be happy and proud to discuss the company’s qualifications to solve your problems, the staff’s professional experience, offer references, and supply any information needed to help you make your decision.
• Interview by phone or in person the most promising candidates to verify that their experience matches your needs.
• Find out if the candidate is an active, professional co-packager. Be sure to ask any question that might have a bering on a contract packager’s qualifications. What types of projects has the company worked on in the past? How long has the company been in operation? How big is the company? What size company does the contract packager most frequently work with? How are fees typically determined? How many of the contract packager’s accounts are repeat business? Is it a member of and active in the Contract Packaging Association?
• Meet the key staff. Make sure you are introduced to the quality control and operations people. The managerial and supervisory staff should have extensive experience in your industry with an understanding of your markets and a strong engineering background. The co-packager also should have training records for inspection by a prospective customer for the asking.
• Visit the facility to check out the housekeeping. A co-packager should be agreeable to letting you view the premises unless it would violate a confidentiality agreement.
• Once you’ve finished the interviewing process, request project proposals from the contract packagers whom you are seriously considering hiring. Make sure the final proposal(s) contain well-defined “Scope of Work,” “Services to be Provided,” and “Description of Fees” or “Fee Schedule” sections.
• Consider what is not in the proposals as well as what is: production rates, number of shifts, penalties for order changes or cancellation, storage for raw materials and finished product, and so forth.
• Resist the temptation to base your decision on price alone. A co-packager should ultimately act as an extension of your business. Often, what appears at first to be a more expensive contract packaging service will more than make up for the difference in the fees by saving you more money and solving your specific problems more efficiently.
• After you’ve fine-tuned details and reached an agreement on the co-packager’s proposal (particularly the “Scope of Work” section), sign a contract and/or issue an appropriate purchase order.
• Provide input, support and on-going interest to the co-packager thoughout the project. Bear in mind that you may be asking the contract packager to become familiar overnight with the knowledge of systems, technology and product quirks your company has had years to develop and work through.
• Be open to suggestions. Contract packagers are innovative, versatile and accustomed to efficiently working within narrow time frames. From experience, they often can suggest minor modifications that will save your company time and money.
• Be sure the co-packager knows and your organization understands that the contract packager is working for an executive within your company with sufficient authority to ensure that the contract packager has the full cooperation of everyone involved with the project.

If you are ready to hire a contract packager, please call us today!

Polyethylene Bagging Services

There are always new and outstanding opportunities for packaging retail products.

For example, an item in a poly bag with a header could be upgraded to a blister pack and garner a higher price point due to a greater perceived value. Or a product on a skin board could be packaged into a clamshell and, not only look better, but offer greater protection from damage.

Recently a major snack food manufacturer discovered that the printed polyethylene sack offered numerous benefits over the corrugate trays they had been using for their individual snack items. Not only did the printed sacks cost less than the printed trays but consumers loved the brighter and snappier graphics available on the plastic sacks and thus bought more product!

The brown bag with a handle on it has been around grocery and department stores for decades but the idea of delivering multiple single serve units within a sack just hadn’t caught on in the manufacturing arena. That is, not until high impact graphics were added and a manufacturing system that could be used to package large numbers of sacks within a single shift.

But how did this revolutionary sacking technology and solution evolve?

Aaron Thomas Company, working with the FORMOST Equipment Corporation, took basic bread bagging equipment and re-engineered the loading areas and in-feed designs to handle the loading of multiple single-serve corn and potato chip bags into pre-made printed sacks. The mechanisms necessary to automatically fill the sacks were then fine tuned to neatly pack the sacks with organized rows of product to reduce damage and enhance customer satisfaction.

Later, a process to automatically seal the bags with standard or double heat seals was incorporated as was in-line pass or fail check weighing validation, automatic bag labeling, and multi-wicket sack feeding. It took almost a year to incorporate all the modifications necessary to maximize production throughput and to minimize production costs.

This revolutionary packaging technology is now available in all three of our locations. It has even been co-opted by our client and is used now nationwide in each of their manufacturing facilities! This resulted in our being honored with the prestigious “Contract Manufacturing Supplier of the Year” award in recognition of our efforts and accomplishments.

As you can see, packaging revolutions are challenging but not impossible if the right conditions are met. First, you need a strong vision of how you want your product packaged and the benefits it offers over existing packaging solutions. Second, you need a product that has the volume and longevity to justify the emotional buy-in and capital investment of your contract packaging partners. And finally, you need a contract packager that has the ability to think out side the box… or tray in this case… to get the job done.