A picture is worth a thousand words. And so is a package. Especially when you consider the myriad behind-the-shelf efforts responsible for the genesis of a given package's market "presentation." And whether those efforts are the creative, technical, or logistical undertakings associated with a given project, rest assured that professionals at the top of their game are working hard to unite the contents of a given package to its outer wrapping. Everything is taken into account, even lesser known considerations like the three "freeze-thaw" cycles that some frozen foods go through before they hit your grocery store and how packaging needs to accommodate these cycles.

And who better to understand these complex processes than the largest carton manufacturer in North America. Graphic Packaging International, headquartered in Marietta, Ga., is a leading full-service provider of paperboard packaging solutions to the beverage, food, and consumer products industries. Among its most famous packages are Coors Brewing Company's "Silver Bullet" metalized multipacks and Procter & Gamble's silvery metallic Crest toothpaste cartons, complete with holograms.

So with clients representing some of the most universal names found on pantry shelves across the land, Graphic Packaging has elevated the process of package design and manufacture to one that structures itself around listening and responding with a tuned and practiced ear to customers' specific needs.

"We look at trends," remarks marketing director Dan Keefe, "both in consumer buying habits and what makes it easier for retailers to manage their shelves. Then we try to translate those trends into opportunities for our customers," he says. "What does the marketplace look for in new product categories? You have to design something that's going to grab people's attention. Afterwards, a high-quality product will sell itself," Keefe offers.

About five years ago, Graphic Packaging was spun off from its parent company, ACX Technologies, and became a publicly held operation. Devoted exclusively to paperboard production, packaging design and manufacture, including laminations, the organization has a suite of services and professionals to execute those services designed to answer pivotal questions in the package design process: "What is the product? What are its requirements? What's its distribution channel? And how will it be manufactured?" says Andy Johnson, Graphic Packaging's senior manager, product marketing.

"We work very flexibly with our clients, collaborating with them to the extent that they want us to," says Johnson, explaining that in the case of some of the larger consumer packaging goods companies, some have their own research and product development departments, "so their needs are not as deep," he notes. Conversely, Graphic Packaging tends to work more closely from start to finish with smaller or medium-sized companies without a similar infrastructure.

"The way we assemble a team depends on the project," Keefe adds. "Some customers have their own design and marketing teams, and they actually present us with finished graphics to apply to a package. In that situation we may just offer paperboard and printing options." With the latter, clients have their choice of sheet- and web-fed offset lithography, rotogravure, flexography, "And also in our particular case," continues Keefe, "we can reverse print film using rotogravure and metalize and laminate to paperboard, to make our "Composipac' packaging structure." Composipac is just one of several packaging processes and materials designed to help clients create marketplace distinction.

Composipac is a trademarked technology invented in 1973 when Coors Brewing Company owned the organization. The packaging material solved a problem for Coors, which packs its cans when they're still wet or "sweating," due to processing requirements. The metal and laminate met the packing challenge and helped shape Coors' marketing identity.

Sharing innovations and research

As a matter of course, Graphic Packaging shares its consumer and market research information with clients, Johnson adds. In fact, after making its market research available, Graphic Packaging gives clients access to an array of packaging services that follows with the company's Structural Design Support group, responsible for creating unique package shapes as well as other design innovations; R&D, including the Material Research group, which provides support for how to combine graphic packaging materials, including investigations into strength of paperboard and laminates, and "barrier" properties; Technical Services Group, which discusses and maps the best manufacturing process and troubleshoots workflow issues for a given product; the Package Machinery Group whose charge is to develop high-speed "filling" equipment. "We can design and spec out a package, engineer the equipment to produce the package, fill it, seal it, all to help products stand out on the shelf," Johnson attests.

Graphic Packaging also has five company laboratories where a multitude of product and package testing happens to assure package integrity. The first two labs, one in Wisconsin and another in Ontario, are devoted to microwave products engineering; the third, in Colorado, is for laminations and barrier packaging; a fourth in Oregon is dedicated to flexible barrier packaging; and the fifth, located in Louisiana, is dedicated to exploring issues connected to paperboard manufacturing design and engineering.

Along these same lines of experimenting and allowing for creative latitude, Keefe says, "We put together working prototypes of ideas for clients, run innovation "fairs' where we present packaging ideas, and do collective brainstorming; sometimes their design team runs with the idea, sometimes it's our design team," Keefe notes. "We like to see innovative customers profit from whatever market advantage we can offer, one that can help a whole product category, or lots of customers," he says.

Different factors impinge on innovation. Of the two primary product categories that Graphic Packaging designs and manufacturers packages for— beverages and foods—subcategories within this "move" in the marketplace at vastly varying rates. For example, "Cereal is growing with Gross Domestic Product, so I call that flat," says Keefe. Conversely, business is booming in another product grouping called "hand-held portable products," to use the packaging vernacular. In other words, meal replacements such as rice bowls, potpies, and other quick foods that can be cooked in a microwave oven for an "on-the-run" demographic or busy people without the time or inclination to use a "slow" conventional oven.

Paperboard built for speed

To meet the growing demand Graphic Packaging has created and trademarked an entire line of packaging inventions which fall under its MicroRave brand and that are designed to cook high-quality foods fast. In particular, the company has invented a paperboard "microwave sleeve," Keefe explains, for one of its client's food products called a "Hot Pocket, or "hand-held' sandwich encrusted in dough and cooked inside the sleeve. In one and half minutes you have a crispy, ready-to-eat sandwich," he explains.

As of mid-August, Graphic Packaging rolled out its first U.S. application of MicroRite technology, likewise a paperboard-based invention for the microwave oven designed to cook pizzas, main meal offerings, and lasagna, for example—food not typically associated with being cooked in a microwave oven. "The paperboard tray can cook these classic dishes—from the freezer to microwave to table—in 15 to 17 minutes," Keefe notes. According to Keefe, the invention shields the outside of a lasagna, let's say, creating crispiness in the right places, as it provides elements to cook the food's center evenly.

Introduced three years ago in Europe and Canada, MicroRite's popularity is exploding in those markets where the cost of energy to run conventional gas or electric ovens is very high. Once more, it extends the concept of brand imaging to the paperboard tray, unlike plastic or foil trays that traditionally have not been a useable surface for advertising. Also under the MicroRave category is another Graphic Packaging trademarked technology for the microwave oven called QuiltWave, a "flexible microwave paper and film solution," Keefe describes, designed, once again, for portability; Quilt Wave lets people grab food out of the microwave and eat it on the run without getting burned, he says.

With 8,000 employees, 25 locations in the United States, and operating in 46 countries worldwide, a company of Graphic Packaging's stature and size has many happy customer stories born of innovation. In 2003 the company was honored with Coca Cola's Supplier of the Year Award. The packaging product that tipped the scales in favor of Graphic Packaging was something known as the "Fridge Vendor," a short carton designed to fit in the narrow shelf space of a refrigerator, and that holds and dispenses 12 cans of soda or bottles of water. "It meets a need, sells in stores like Wal-Mart and other retailers, and provides convenient carry-out packaging, that offers consumers a useful dispensing feature in the refrigerator," says Keefe.

And when Procter & Gamble came to the company to ask how it could introduce a new line of flavors to its archetypal Crest toothpaste, the team at Graphic Packaging left no creative stone unturned. "P&G came to us and said: "We know you guys have been making the Crest box for years. What can we do that's different?'" Keefe recalls. P&G came up with the overall design and scratch-and-sniff label, and Graphic Packaging took it to another level with the precise printing, laminating, label application, and high gloss UV coating. Keefe says that Procter & Gamble was "marvelously happy" with the result. And the new packaging's holographic image was the 2003 Flexographic Technical Association winner in the category of Process Print Quality.

Packaging product enhancements from ink jetting inside cartons to "metalizing" substrates help Graphic Packaging to create distinctive packaging for its clients. Among the company's additional enhancements are "Sustain," designed to create paperboard strength and crush resistance. "Z-Flute," also engineered for strength and aesthetic advantage, is created with a "board-to-board lamination," Keefe says, so that the paperboard's corrugation is replaced by lamination of board strips on the inside of the package, not the outside. The "club store" phenomenon, stores like Sam's, Costco, and others that sell products in bulk and therefore require larger product packaging, inspired Z-Flute.

And the company's metalized and laminated packaging has established brand identity for more than a few clients in varying product categories including Cascade dishwasher detergent and Lever 2000 body soap. "Whether we're talking about scratch-and-sniff packaging or microwave solutions," says Keefe, "When you get down to the consumer products business, our goal is to package results for our clients and to help them grow their sales by reaching consumers."

M. Grace Maselli has been writing about the packaging industry for the past 15 years, targeting owners and managers of multi-sized information management organizations. She can be contacted at mgmwrite@hotmail.com.