Profile: Olmarc Packageing Co.

Contract Packaging With Pop!

Olmarc Packaging Co. Innovates Many Food Blending and Packaging Solutions?

By M. Grace Maselli

First there were none. Then there was one. And within just a couple of years, there were literally more than a billion bags of microwave popcorn with kernels of corn gently detonated and tumbling inside specially designed bags made available to households across the country and around the world.

This possibility—the delivery of an entire food category into consumers’ hands—is an apt demonstration of the manufacturing aptitude and dexterity of the widely respected Olmarc Packaging Company of Northlake, IL, a nimbly positioned contract packager with enough agility in the marketplace to vary its approach to manufacturing, brand strategy, packaging, and distribution to meet the fluctuating needs of its client base.

That base, or core business, is food. “We’re a contract manufacturer for the food industry,” says Bob Walters, Olmarc’s vice president of sales. More specifically, the company’s innovative strong suit in this corner of the market is dry and liquid blending, processing, and turnkey services for clients who sell everything from microwave popcorn, meal mixes, cereals, confections, dry bakery mixes, juice, snacks, and more.

Olmarc’s forte is to assist with any food-related manufacturing and package design challenges that clients toss their way, turning up in response customized engineering feats, operational achievements, and triumphs in its lab facilities, all within the space of 400,000 manufacturing square feet, the sum total of both of Olmarc’s Illinois plants, the one in Northlake and another in Franklin Park.

Olmarc responded to the challenge when a large popcorn client came to the company with a manufacturing dilemma—no available equipment to open the popcorn bag or fill it with appropriate ingredients. “Our manufacturing group and machine shop people developed the equipment to meet the need,” remarks Jim O’Toole of Olmarc’s business development group. O’Toole appreciates the history of popcorn packaging, and reminds us that “shelf-stable” microwave popcorn has its antecedent in frozen popcorn, a food product from the 1970s.

More than just an ‘assembler’

Olmarc’s Bob Walters says: “We’re happy to be able to say to a customer: ‘Here, try this. And we have the manufacturing machine to make it for you.’”

In operation for more than 38 years, Olmarc has a long history of blending foods—cake and muffin mixes and Hawaiian Punch, let’s say, for its Fortune 100 food clients. From that point on, however, Olmarc’s customers as well as our competitors’ customers typically did everything else,” says Walters. “They did package and product development, they supplied package materials and food ingredients. We were the assembler.”

In other words, in the past, contract packagers “assembled” a product that was already made, Walters clarifies. More distinctively, a contract manufacturer assembles products and packages. And while Olmarc has always been customizing manufacturing lines to meet the idiosyncratic requirements of various customers’ specific product categories, their business has evolved. “Recently, as our customers have continued to streamline their organizations, they’ve become more and more reliant on their suppliers to pick up the slack,” Walters notes.

For example, O’Toole recounts a recent case where a customer came to Olmarc to increase the volume of production for a food product that was doing exceptionally well in the market because of its ‘low carb’ count. “So we researched the equipment, and within six weeks, we were in production to meet the increased demand,” says O’Toole.

In another recent case, a client that traditionally packages its wares in boxes or cartons wanted to transition to cups. “And since the client was unfamiliar with this packaging option they asked Olmarc to research equipment,” O’Toole says. “We were quickly able to put together a line to manufacture the cup and shrink-wrap it with a sleeve label.”

Included among the changes Olmarc has made to respond to “streamlining” challenges is the formation of a package development group. The purpose of this group is to be able to do package development for clients from beginning to end. “One of the things that’s been a strength for us and that’s become more formalized is our exceptionally capable engineering group, where we can literally design the equipment to get the job done,” says Walters. “Now that we have this formal engineering department, we’ve expanded to extend these services to our customers. We’ve also formalized our packaging development group. We have to bring more value-added services to the market.”

How Olmarc’s package design process unfolded is demonstrated when the company was awarded a contract to solve a shelf space predicament for a client. “The original packaging was taking up too much room so there needed to be a reconciliation of the space, to help the customer come up with a solution to meet the mandates of the retailer who wanted to reconfigure the shelf space,” Walters explains. “So we redesigned the primary and secondary packages to allow them to put more units on the shelf. We are now running that product for our client.”

Blending many ingredients

There have likewise been developments in the blending phase of the manufacturing process at Olmarc. According to Walters, Olmarc installed an extruded snack food line for one of our customers, to push a pretzel mix through a die. “We blend pretzel ingredients into a paste and extrude it through a metal die shaped like a pretzel. Afterwards, the shape is sliced off and baked or fried,” Walters explains. “We’ve gone so far as to install complete manufacturing lines—to make, extrude, fry, and package a food product,” he says.

According to Walters, another customer wanted some unusually shaped flexible pouches for a new product. So Olmarc went to work to design a selection of choices for the client, confident that there’s a high probability that the client will select one of them. Olmarc’s flexibility means that the company can be involved at the inception stage of product and packaging development or, in a word, can retrofit its services to create a more elaborate market presence for any one of its customers.

Olmarc works resourcefully and capably to differentiate products in the marketplace. “We can be involved with product and packaging development in the early stages of the process to meet the requirements of containing and selling the product.” Walters says. “Or we can be a very large support group for clients’ package development people because we talk the same language, we have the same thought processes.”

Once more, Walters emphasizes the flexibility of contract manufacturing: “We can be on the research and development side or, on an ongoing basis, we can work with operations and package design folks, to create a dialogue and systems for improving the package development to be more cost effective. We can come in at any point that our client needs us.”

Always on the lookout

Olmarc picks up the slack when food manufacturers want to streamline their organization.

But more than waiting for clients to come calling with problems that require solving—and almost always with near-emergency deadline requirements, Olmarc takes a sensible, realistic stance toward its business, and is constantly looking at new innovations. Ongoing and proactive interaction and dialogue between the company’s packaging design, engineering services, and sales departments, as well as key personnel, gives voice to new ideas that are routinely suggested to clients.

“A lot of packing innovation comes out of Europe, so we attend the biggest international manufacturing and packaging trade shows, looking at systems for new procedures and courses of action,” Walters notes. “We might say to a client, ‘Hey, we found this neat package or neat packaging process that could give you a point of differentiation with a good cost-benefit ratio,’” he remarks, adding, “We’re always out there looking, whether it’s for flexible or rigid packaging concepts, and we’re happy to be able to say to a customer: ‘Here, try this. And we have the manufacturing machine to make it for you.’”

A proactive position is likewise a safeguard. “Our world is a very volatile one,” Walters confers. “It’s one that demands quick response on our part. There have been cases where we literally had only eight weeks to produce a packaging line for a client.”

Instead, if Olmarc can present ideas to customers, suggesting how to do a given job, it will probably mean more lead time afforded to meet demands, whether it’s a product rollout or launch, or brand extension. “Our strengths are in our engineering and operations groups,” says O’Toole. “We’ll do everything we can to follow through on our commitments to clients and to get to market fast. We have all the appropriate GMPs—Good Manufacturing Processes—and lab facilities to back up our pledge to high-quality, reliable service.”