Arts Publications

North America building: Polytainers moved into the American market well before NAFTA was even a glint in most people's eyes. Now the Toronto-based packaging company plans to pull up the shades and let people know who they are

Print Action, Jun 2003 by Robinson, Jon

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A stranger reaches into a camping cooler and one by one begins to pull out containers, looking for some sort of response each time a new product is revealed. It's not long before Alex Arevalo recognizes a margarine container and smiles. That's one of ours, he says, number four-oh-nine-sixteen-tee. The stranger looks a little confused, wondering what this number has to do with Arevalo's job, what 40916T has to do with anything.

After being instructed to do so, he turns the container over and, sure enough, number 40916T is stamped into the bottom of the margarine container. Clockwise from that number - at six o'clock - is a symbol and the word Polytainers. Last year alone, more than 3.2 billion other containers with the Polytainers stamp reached grocery store shelves across North America. And the day after hearing Arevalo's camping story, I couldn't help but visit Value-Mart and turn over 30 or so different looking thinwall rigid plastic containers in the yogurt section.

With countless minutes of obsessive investigating in front of me, I stepped back five feet and took in the entire section, trying to imagine what impact 806E might have if placed among the hundreds of regular fat-bodied, 8-ounce yogurts. 806E is a prototype 6-ounce container, long and thin with more tapering. Arevalo, a parts designer at Polytainers, showed it to me as he explained why Solidworks' 3D imagining system has dramatically improved what he can do.

"Timeline to market and new ideas are critical in packaging and this is where Solidworks has helped," says Michael Hill, who in 2001 joined Polytainers as vice president of marketing and sales, adding, "the SLA models have helped." SLA translates as stereolithography, a process that converts 3-dimensional CAD files into something that you - and clients - can hold in your hands. The prototype process, which can be turned around in a matter of hours from an emailed Solidworks file, uses a laser beam to cure a photosensitive epoxy in increments or layers of 0.006 inches.

Virtually any geometric shape can be formed by stereolithography into what looks like an object consistent of clear spider yarn. If necessary, the layers and accuracy can go as low as 0.004 inches. This allows Polytainers to stretch the possibilities of lightweight containers, a growing trend in rigid plastic packaging through the use of advanced resins, which Polytainers uses to create polypropylene-based containers and lids.

Solidworks is just one of many modern packaging tools used by the Toronto-based company as part of its business plan to capture more of the rigid plastic packaging market in the United States. The plan began in 1990 when - four years before NAFTA was even enacted - president Bob Barrett's foresight led to the construction of a second production facility in Kansas City.

In a few months' time that facility will double its injection-mold capacity, an expansion part and parcel to the company's growth strategy in the U.S., where it now generates a significantly greater portion of its business. Powerhouse clients like Unilever and Kraft certainly help in this drive to be a North American company.

Vision

"What we want to be is literally top of mind," says Hill. "Our customers and our potential customers know us, but we want retailers and design agencies to be aware of us as a total solutions provider."

Like many of Canada's leading printing companies, Polytainers has traditionally and purposely held a low profile. In 2001 the management team sat down in a boardroom to brainstorm a vision of the future. The result of that meeting was a vision statement: Polytainers will be recognized in the food and dairy industry as the integrated supply chain provider of thinwall rigid plastic packaging with innovative solutions that reduce our customers' total systems cost.

"You have to provide value in the packaging that you supply," says Hill. "Value includes consistent quality delivered on time at a competitive price and really what we do in terms of innovation is think through how our package design will help our customers to optimize their costs."

As I stand by Arevalo's desk, trying to follow his explanation of Solidworks, he directs my attention to the little lip on which one container rests inside another container for stacking. Officially called the stacking shoulder, he shows me a recently finished project that altered the structural design of a container and saved a client (literally) miles of container stacking space - to Chicago and back was the analogy given.

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Hill explains that the total-systems-cost strategy considers everything from stacking shoulders to the shape of the product and the graphics that entice a consumer to pick up a particular brand instead of a competing brand. This, of course, hints at the competitive advantage supporting Polytainers' strategy to build its presence in the United States. Different from commercial printing, Polytainers is working with a functioning product and able to look with greater detail at a customer's total systems cost because it can be involved from the concept to delivery of a rigid package.