Improving the package

The multibillion-dollar packaging industry is responsible for just about 6.4 percent of the gross domestic product. From corrugated boxes and pallets to conveyors and high-level graphics to plastic netting, packaging touches nearly every product we buy. In the Blue Ridge Region, there is a good sampling of market segments, many of which are environmentally friendly.

The packaging industry is an essential part of our retail environment that is often overlooked, says Ralph Rupert, special research faculty member at Virginia Tech and the new director of the Center for Unit Load Design in the College of Natural Resources. With 90 percent of everything that is made in the U.S. shipped in a corrugated box and 90 percent of those boxes shipped on pallets, Rupert says, transport packaging is nearly all wood-based.

"When we combine the wood fiber in the package-the corrugated box that most goods are shipped in and the wood fiber in the pallet," he says, "that is the greatest use of wood fiber in the U.S. It is a bigger use of wood fiber than all of new housing, than in remodeling and repair, and than the rest of the paper industry combined." Rupert adds, "Corrugated packaging is collected at more than 70 percent for recycling. People don't know that. The average corrugated box has 43 percent recycled fiber in it. People don't know that."

Plastic netting

There are a lot of niche businesses in this industry that play important roles, says Michael Woldanski, director of sales at Conwed Plastics Inc.'s regional office in Roanoke, Conwed's niche business is extruded plastic netting.

Woldanski, who has an engineering degree, a master's and an MBA, has been with the company for more than 11 years. The packaging segment of the Minneapolis-based business does $20 million a year. Although packaging is just a small part of Conwed's annual sales volume of $106.4 million, he says, it is vital to most businesses: "Packaging is often outsourced because those companies that specialize in it can do it faster and more efficiently." At Conwed, the company focuses on protecting and preserving a product, and "getting it into bulk [packaging]" because, Woldanski says, people are increasingly buying in bulk out of convenience, which also drives the market.