P J Wiebel, CEOFounded and run by the Wiebel family—now in its third generation—Econo-Pak serves the unique needs of the food industry, including many Fortune 200 and Fortune 500 companies. Specializing in packaging dry foods like cookies, crackers, candy, pretzels, chips, rice, sugar, chocolate and more, the company has over 150 packaging machines to custom fit a client’s needs and is the go-to partner in the food packaging industry.
To diversify its offerings and provide more flexibility to satisfy clients, Econo-Pak has started expanding its 200,000 square feet state-of-the-art building by another 125,000 square feet. The additional space brings more reliability for production to help clients save more time and money.
Most of Econo-Pak’s clients come through word-of-mouth within the industry through its 41 years of packaging excellence. When clients witness how well Econo-Pak serves them from the first time around, they become the company’s primary brand ambassadors. That said, Econo-Pak is also increasing its social media presence with videos and interactions to help clients and potential customers understand the company better. Econo-Pak intends to become the main source of content for contract packaging, educating people about its processes and how it is the right fit for all packaging needs.
Econo-Pak is also an expert in variety or mix packs, a vastly growing market. Mixed packaging, where brands bundle multiple products and sell them as a single unit, is becoming a unique way of increasing sales and profits. But from a contract packaging perspective, this translates to handling different coding and traceability requirements, and the overall date code on the package should correspond with the oldest item in the list.
“Our packaging follows rigorous well-developed standards, and operates with a sophisticated system and uninterrupted service to ensure product is produced properly,” states P J Wiebel, CEO of Econo-Pak.
One of the key challenges Econo-Pak solves through its holistic approach is helping larger companies reap the benefits of contract packaging. Contrary to the common belief that contract packaging adds to the production cost, its fixed-cost business model saves more money for larger companies as they increase their production volume. Econo-Pak’s process for first-time contract packaging users involves setting up internal systems not just to package items but also to ship them and get detailed reporting done to ensure a smooth workflow that meets all their quality requirements.
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Our packaging follows rigorous well-developed standards, and operates with a sophisticated system and uninterrupted service to ensure no product recall
“Our flexibility to help our clients bring more products into the market via retail and wholesale e-commerce further helps small and big brands overcome internal challenges,” says Mike Mead, director of sales and marketing at Econo-Pak.
These values and services helped a client when they wanted to launch 50 items over the course of a year. Initially, the number of launches per the timeline seemed unrealistic. The client already had the packaging designs ready and wanted Econo-Pak to take over the packaging and production schedules. Econo-Pak sourced all the packaging equipment and finished the work in record time. In fact, it hit every required timeline to introduce the products to the audiences, which became an exemplary feat for the client in the domain.
Econo-Pak will continue driving such growth for itself and its clients by leveraging industry-leading partnerships and technological advancements. The company won’t hang its boots until contract packaging becomes synonymous with Econo-Pak.
