People everywhere need and want pretty much the same things.
Foodstuffs, clothing, furniture, appliances and so on down a long long list.
This is the broad general reality of the marketplace.
The market is everywhere.
The other side of this all -embracing reality is that producers, the people who supply what people need and want, are not everywhere.
They can't be.
A furniture maker in North Carolina could well be working on an order for California.
At the same time, a flower grower in California is filling an order for New York.
And a brewer in Minnesota is filling orders for communities far from the availability of hops and malt and old world traditions replanted.
The point is, both sides, producer and consumer alike, are dependent on the total sources of physical distribution to make this basic and vital exchange possible.
There are of course many ways to move products to market, but taking everything into account, there are no inexpensive ways to do it.
For another part of the marketing reality is that movement and storage of goods from production to consumption add up to the third highest cost of doing business, being surpassed only by costs of material and labor.
As the holding, moving, protecting link between production and consumption, the package is the one element common to the whole process of physical distribution.
Container Corporation of America, as a major designer and producer of packaging, is primarily concerned with bringing the performance of this infinitely versatile resource of distribution to higher levels of achievement.
Packaging, as a general term, relates to far more than we can adequately cover here.
What the container division means by packaging is the broad range of shipping containers that gets goods of all kinds from producer to consumer.
In the same way, it's a very complex process that everybody knows.
The best way to understand the full scope of this area of packaging is to see it at work all the way.
Take that basic box.
If it just sat there to be filled and emptied, it would be a pretty simple design problem, materially, structurally, and graphically.
But holding things is not the end and all of the container's function.
It has to carry things.
Before it leaves the production site, it is set up, filled, conveyed, closed, sealed, picked up, carried, stacked, unstacked, carried again, and loaded into some kind of carrier.
All of this, mind you, before it leaves its production point, the one environment where it can expect sympathetic treatment.
Once away from home base, that container, carrying and hopefully protecting your product, comes face to face with a continuing series of moments of truth, many of them rough moments, which are the reality of every product's physical distribution life.
And it is physical.
Whether your product travels by road, rail, water, air, or some combination of these, it is shaken, bumped, pitched, rolled, pushed, pulled, jarred, jolted, and randomly compressed from all sides across as many miles and through as many hours as are necessary to get it there.
Subsequently, it is offloaded and re -handled out, down, around, up, over, and back again for more falling along road, street, alley, and dock.
From all of this, you can see why every container corporation structural designer can assume that mobility will be a function of the performance of any container he is called on to design.
In point of fact, he assumes nothing.
He will know the specifics of performance each structure must accommodate across a broad range of packaging responsibilities, and these specifics can vary widely from application to application.
When the structural designer at any one of the division 30 -odd plants selects the board for his current assignment, he is far from being alone in his judgments.
He can call on the experience of any or all of the other plants and mills in the corporation, plus the active involvement of highly specialized staff departments at any point in his considerations.
Central to packaging performance across the board is the division's technical services laboratory in Carroll Stream, Illinois.
It is no exaggeration to say that this laboratory wrote much of the book on testing procedures for the industry.
Moreover, the results of their continuing activities receive wide press coverage here and abroad.
There are tests conducted here that require months to complete.
Others are short, direct, and immediately recordable.
Tests that determine ability of containers or container materials to endure the physical abuses of distribution are basic.
These include tests for compression strength, tearing strength, puncture resistance, bursting, crushing, dropping, vibration, and shock.
But ability to withstand physical abuse does not complete the container's responsibility.
Evaluation of surface coatings to protect against grease migration or for minimizing abrasion or for permitting easy release of contents represent other important areas of laboratory concern.
Resolution of unusual gluing problems is another.
And with the growing emphasis of graphic expression on many categories of shipping containers, printability of various container surface treatments and durability of the inks that print them get a lot of laboratory attention.
The effects of temperature and humidity extremes in situations that accurately simulate the range of transport and storage conditions containers often meet in real life dramatize the laboratory's facility depth.
And graphic documentation of the effects of contaminants and infestations of customers' containers attest to the variety of problems that come in from the field.
Problems solved here at the Technical Services Laboratory not only render valuable service to the originating plant and its customers, but enhance further the comprehensive background of information so important to overall packaging service by the whole division.
So the structural designer knows the performance capabilities of the materials he specifies.
On this knowledge, he can build purposefully and innovatively.
Structural innovation made an important contribution to the packaging of chairs at the United Furniture Company's plant in Ronda, North Carolina.
The good basic box did not always fully protect chairs and shipment.
The problem being to accommodate leg spreads of varying width in the same size container.
The innovative solution by Container Corporation's designers was the tube and rail, a simple device shipped flat and assembled on the site.
Easily adaptable to any spread dimension, the tube and rail permits solid interlock of product and container and safe arrival through all the normal hazards of distribution.
Structural innovation can relate to brute strength where this quality is a requirement.
The development of laminated bulk shipping containers has dramatically raised the level of container capacity, making paperboard a stellar performer in a demanding area of distribution.
One thousand pound loads of plastic pellets for the Clinton, Iowa plant of the Chemplex Corporation is an example of the Container Division's extra dimension at work.
With a half ton load inside, there is more than enough extra strength to support additional external stacking pressures.
Half a continent away in the Kingsburg, California plant of Sunmade Raising Growers, another version of brute strength.
This time, Container Corporation's Dynacore bulk shipper accommodates 1 ,500 pounds of raisins for shipment to institutional customers.
Moreover, they do it over and over again.
Each entry on the container's lock represents one 1 ,500 pound load of raisins safely delivered.
Prior to this development, 30 pounds was the standard for bulk shipments of raisins.
So this structural innovation has produced a 50 to 1 improvement.
Even a casual observation of the stages of laminated bulk container fabrication shows the integral nature of its strength.
Lamination is the key.
First, through the inner double wall tube to the outer container and subsequently of the double four inch glue lamp.
This makes the glue joint corner as strong as the other three corners of the finished container, a result superior to either taping or stitching.
The safe and expeditious distribution of flowers is a quantum jump from the problems of bulk shipment.
But their special requirements of container designers are equally exacting.
Set up in the growers' own packing facilities in the Encinitas, California area, these containers must fully protect their delicate cargoes while facilitating repeated handling into and out of air freight collecting stations and trucking to the San Diego Air Terminal.
Transfer to jet flights eastward sets these containers on course for far away markets.
Others will be open for business in markets closer to their points of origin.
Container Corporation Container Corporation has a long history of close involvement with growers, not just of flowers, but of the full range of produce all over the country.
In a King City, California packing plant, a large volume of tomatoes is the focal point.
And as in the case of many another high production situation, a mechanical packaging installation helps packaging keep pace.
In this instance, an automatic former sets up the basic tomato box.
Special inserts are added by hand prior to conveying completed containers into the packing room.
While the elimination of all manual activity on the packaging line is not always feasible, it is an ideal usually fostered by Container Corporation's mechanical packaging specialists.
A fairly typical challenge was presented by the American Kitchen Foods Company in Caribou, Maine, where an automated folding carton packaging line fed sealed cartons of frozen french fries into a manual case packing operation.
Not only was a frantic pace required to handle the upstream output, but there was poor utilization of space because of the location of the case sealer in another section of the plant.
The solution, effected by the joint efforts of American Kitchen Foods Company and the Mechanical Packaging Department, combined case loading and sealing in one highly efficient compact unit.
Also changed was the package to a less expensive wrap pack container, accurately and securely formed around its contents.
In addition to an improved container, the new system improves production efficiency and floor space utilization.
The wrap pack container and Concora wrap machinery combination is easily adaptable to a variety of product sizes, shapes and densities.
A change of both pace and product characterizes another mechanical packaging installation.
This one in the Perry, Iowa plant of Oscar Meyer Company, focal point of an important accomplishment in meat packaging.
Here the basic challenge was to move the packaging of pork loins away from the long established dominance of wire bound wooden containers.
The structural requirements included an unusual length to width proportion with heavy reinforcing of side walls to accommodate density of product.
These and other special conditions were met by the adaptation of an unusual version of the design style tray.
The converging of elongated end flaps at the center of the container side walls greatly reinforced this critical area.
Top flanges add further stiffness and a reinforcing inner ledge for extra stacking strength.
Machinery for setting up and sealing this container was provided in two units because of the hand packing operation that must occur between forming and sealing.
Precise forming is very important both for proper alignment and gluing of end flaps to container sides and for trouble free passage of filled containers through automatic sealing.
This new development has been enthusiastically received in the meat industry.
Continuing refinements will broaden its application.
No coverage of high performance packaging can overlook the rugged versatility of solid fiber well known for its wide use in the beverage industry.
At the Grain Belt Brewery in Minneapolis, a line of returnable beer carriers brings these sturdy cases back for yet another refill.
In another part of the brewery, a prototype former installed by Container Corporation more than a decade ago feeds new one piece beer carriers into the packaging stream.
Using the same material in a different configuration, a new former developed by the division's mechanical packaging department sets up three piece beer carriers in a completely automated installation.
The strength and durability of solid fiber board, long proved in beverage carriers and other containers, is coping dramatically with the challenges of a broader area of involvement.
Moving great quantities of goods, but not as packaging.
In the form of pallet pads, this Container Corporation development demonstrates its many advantages over wood pallets.
Among them, lower cost, less bulk, less weight, and freedom from splintering.
In well run warehouses and transfer centers across the land, the pallet pad is proving and reproving its utility to the burgeoning science of material flow.
Container Corporation's interest and involvement in this area is no casual happenstance.
Across many years and many millions of miles of getting all kinds of things to all kinds of places on all kinds of demanding schedules, we have learned a lot about material flow and its close relative material handling, much of it far removed from packaging per se.
And since the lessons of these experiences are continuously updated, we pass them along to interested customers as a special service.
One way we pass them along is through Container Corporation's regional traffic offices, where services include helping our customers better control the direct costs of transporting their products to market.
Packaging has become a prime consideration in the determination of freight rates.
Size, weight, style, and construction of a product's container can profoundly affect its transportation costs.
A difference of one inch in container dimension saved one of our customers 40 % in shipping costs.
Separating product components into two containers saved 80 % for another.
While these examples may well be considered unusual, they do help dramatize the importance of experienced counseling as a counter to the steadily increasing costs of basic transportation.
Counseling on material handling can range from something as basic as the physical dimensions of loading docks to the design of total systems for movement of goods in distribution centers.
The total systems approach is a growing factor in the performance of packaging.
How a shipping container performs on and through sophisticated conveyor systems, where printed codes automatically activate route selection, is one example.
How containers holding heavy appliances stand up under repeated multiple stacking operations is another.
Here, of course, the home environment is friendly, but the pace is too fast to permit coddling.
Music In any event, sophisticated systems are by no means guaranteed further down the distribution line.
There are still plenty of the long, familiar conventional warehouses where your products have to make it through less than ideal conditions.
In such situations, everything the container has going for it will be useful and perhaps vital.
Long stands in the varying conditions of storage will make good use of those extra qualities built in by technical services laboratory specifications.
Getting out of warehouses can be a problem also.
When your product's number is called, the performance of the distribution graphics of its container will make or not make its point.
Music By making the harried order picker's job easier, your container's graphics will ensure expeditious retrieval and movement of its contents from the storage to the merchandising arena, a critical transition by any measure.
For most shipping containers, arrival at the retail market outlet marks the end of the line.
With its demanding assignment of shepherding physical distribution successfully completed, these containers can be honorably discharged.
This kind of job well done conclusion applies to something like 85 % of the shipping containers used in today's distribution channels.
For the statistically smaller segment, but nevertheless very large quantity of containers, there is still one more river to cross once your product has reached the merchandising world.
That one more river to cross separates product and consumer at the point of purchase, and the name of the bridge that brings them together is consumer appeal.
There is a very satisfying kind of completeness in helping bring about this final link up with the consumer.
As the originators of the design and market research concept in packaging nearly three decades ago, Container Corporation has had a continuing involvement with what people like and respond to, and how to convert this experience into consumer motivation.
Perhaps an impressive gathering of Indian chiefs is the best quick evidence of Container Corporation's interest in the well -being of your product in the world of merchandising.
Each of these statuettes signifies a top award in a point of purchase display competition, and each award was shared by one of our customers.
The power the display division's designs to win customers and influence sales has a very solid and productive basis.
Everything that goes into these effective structures is an element of a well -considered merchandising strategy.
Their power to attract comes from resourceful employment of all the tools and techniques of good design, plus the extra visual thrust of dimension.
Dimension that not only utilizes the inherent versatility of paperboard, but adds such other materials and techniques as creative design solutions may suggest.
Container Corporation is the only supplier of displays with truly coast -to -coast design and manufacturing facilities.
The structures are lightweight, easily assembled, and highly expressive of the idea orientation of our company.
Idea orientation, of course, has much broader application in our company than graphic and display design.
Our use of computer technology is a case in point.
Central computers in our board mills monitor the mixing of chemicals for pulp preparation, for one example.
And each of the division's plants is tied into Container Corporation's Computer Center in Chicago for much useful administrative detailed backup, including the welter of estimate data pertinent to comprehensive packaging service.
Since computers work around the clock, one day's local input becomes the next morning's printout at the local plant's option.
We have seen packaging at work in its three primary environments, production, distribution, and merchandising.
And we have emphasized the truism that the container's performance in each environment depends on what was put into its design, production, and supporting service by Container Corporation.
In every instance, we help the producer with a problem, or several problems.
These problems were brought to the attention of the local Container Corporation plant in the producer's own area.
The producer or his representatives conferred with the various specialists in our local plant, each concerned with one of the particulars of the packaging problems under discussion.
In effect, our people became his people, and they worked it all out together, eventually with a solution.
Sometimes the solution was structural design, sometimes mechanical packaging, sometimes graphic design, often all free.
In many instances, such divisional staff services as transportation and material handling were brought to bear on the problem, again initiated by the local plant.
That's the way it all works, study and recommendation, problem and solution.
There are many advantages to this kind of broad gauge local service, some more obvious than others.
Being near you, our local plant can get containers to you when you need them, minimizing inventory control problems related to packaging.
The same proximity factor makes it easy for our representatives to render the personal service that can make the big difference.
But the other side of the coin has great value to you also.
As part of a nationwide packaging organization, each local plant can call on resources not always available to local enterprises, resources that can also make the big difference.
What we do locally, regionally, and nationally comes down finally to that basic box we started with.
Every container we design has multiple responsibilities, and the fulfillment of each must be accomplished with no detriment to the others.
What we deliver to you is a finely tuned vehicle of distribution, engineered to the special needs of your product at the most vulnerable time of its life.
Thank you.
