Plastpac

Plastpac makes single polymer corrugated shipping containers for produce, seafood, meat and poultry at 30 Boright Avenue in Kenilworth, New Jersey.

Family owned. The manufacturing is here because customers asked for it to be here. Resin through sheet through finished box, all under one roof, which means the specification does not get handed off to somebody else halfway through.

The boxes are built for the conditions that destroy a wax carton. Hydro cooling. Ice. Five days in a cooler. Product that goes in wet and has to come outlooking like it did not.

And when the box is empty it does not go to a landfill. It comes back to Plastpac and becomes a new box. Plastpac runs that loop in house rather than handing the material to an outside recycler.

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Manufacturing:

•   Single polymer corrugated,manufactured in house from resin through sheet through finished box

•   Kenilworth, New Jersey. Made inthe USA.

•   Standing die library across greens, corn and broccoli formats, including the 1.35 bushel greens box

•   Custom tooling available for regional formats we do not already run

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Print and finish

•   Up to four colors, printed flat, effectively a single side print

•   Three colors or fewer preferred

•   Mostly white stock, other colors possible

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Ordering and delivery

•   Truckload production, typically one size per load

•   Boxes ship flat

•   No territorial restriction. We deliver nationally, including Texas.

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FAQs Regarding Manufacturing:

Where are the boxes actually made?

Kenilworth, New Jersey. We run the whole process ourselves, from resin to sheet to finished box. Nothing is imported and nothing is converted from somebody else's sheet.

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Do you already have a box in my size?

Probably. We keep a standing die library covering the common greens, corn and broccoli formats, including the 1.35 bushel greens box. Tell us the dimensions you run now and we will tell you straight whether we have it.

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What if my region packs a format you do not run?

We can create new tooling for it. Formats vary a fair amount by growing region, so this comes up more often than you would expect.

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Can you print our brand on thebox?

Up to four colors, though three or fewer usually looks better and prices better. Printing is applied flat, so it is effectively a single side print.

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What does a print plate cost?

Roughly fifteen hundred to three thousand dollars depending on complexity, and normally the customer covers it. On real volume that is not a meaningful number. On a single load it is. If you are committing to volume we can look at absorbing it into the pricing instead.

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What colors do the boxes come in?

Mostly white. Other colors are possible.

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What is the minimum order?

One truckload. Depending on box size that runs roughly twenty thousand to forty thousand boxes, most commonly around twenty five thousand. A load is usually a single size.

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Where do you ship?

Anywhere in the country. We have no territorial agreement restricting where we sell, and we deliver to Texas regularly.

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Industries Served:

•   Grower shippers packing leafy greens, cabbage, collards, kale and mustard greens

•   Sweet corn growers running hydro-cooled product

•   Broccoli growers, north and south

•   Seafood processors and shippers

•   Meat and poultry packers

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What we are built for

•   Product that ships wet, iced or hydro-cooled

•   Truckload volume, roughly 25,000 boxes on a typical load

•   Operations that pack their own product

•   Anywhere in the country

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What we are not built for

•   Dry pack. Bulk potatoes, onions in bins, tree fruit already committed to reusable crates.

•   Single pallet orders and onetime projects

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Problems We Solve:

"Our boxes are sagging in the cooler and we are losing stack height."

A wax carton is stiff at the moment you pack it. That is the only moment the buyer sees it. Two to three days into a cooler it starts to break down and sag, and once it sags you cannot stack as high and you cannot double stack. You are paying for cooler space you can no longer use. Our box holds its shape for the whole time the product sits.

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"We are repacking product that never should have needed repacking."

Product sits five days, then sells. Now you are repacking twice over. Once because the box has come apart and cannot ship. And again to pull out the units that have spotted or discolored so only good product goes out the door. That is labor you never budgeted and never invoiced anyone for.

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"We cannot re-ice product that has been sitting."

Ice a wax box that has sat in a cooler for five days will not survive the second pass. So it must be a new box and another run through the icing machine. Our box opens, gets re iced in place, and closes.

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"Our produce looks a week old on day five."

We will not claim extended shelf life and you should not trust anyone who does. What we will claim is extended healthy shelf life. In wax, at day three to five, product reads as a week old. In ours, at day five, it still reads like day one. By day eight or nine the difference narrows. It varies by commodity, by ventilation and hole pattern, and by how wet the product went in. It is a look test, not a laboratory test, and the look is what your buyer is grading.

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"We hydro-cool, and wax cannot take it."

You already know this, because the industry settled it decades ago. Sweet corn does not run in wax anywhere. Near freezing water pouring over product for an hour destroys a wax carton. That is why corn runs in wood, in reusable crates, or in plastic. The honest question is why that logic stops at the corn line, when the same water is running over your greens.

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"We cannot get reusable crates when we need them."

We are not asking to replace your crate program. We are asking to be the phone call when the crates are short, or late, or the pool is empty in the middle of your peak. Some of our customers run roughly a quarter of their volume in our boxes for exactly that reason, and to control which product goes into the cooler and sits.

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"We got burned on an import and we are not doing it again."

The math that made imports tempting has mostly gone away. The gap used to be around forty cents a box. It is now a couple of cents, if that, once tariffs and price increases are counted. And a couple of cents does not pay for ocean freight risk, lead times you cannot compress, customs exposure, or a quality problem you discover on the packing line in the middle of your season.

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"We put a recyclable bag inside a box that goes to the landfill."

A lot of growers have spent real money proving their consumer package is recyclable, and then shipped it inside a wax carton that no mill will take, because the wax contaminates the fiber stream. Nobody has said that out loud to you politely. Our box is the part of that story that currently has a hole in it.

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"We would try it, but we cannot commit to a truckload."

Then do not. If it is a size we already run, we will send you fifty to a hundred and fifty pieces at no charge. Build a pallet. Load it with real product. Put it in your cooler for a week. Run it over the road. Rip one apart. Then tell us what you think. Nobody switches a packaging line on a promise.

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Common Questions and Answers:

‍Can I try the boxes before committing to a truckload?

Yes. If it is a size we already stock, we will pull fifty to a hundred and fifty pieces and send them at no charge. Enough to assemble a pallet, load it with real product, and put it through your actual cooler and your actual trucks. We would rather you abuse a sample than take our word for anything.

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How does the box hold up in a wet cooler?

It does not soften, sag or delaminate. Water does not go into it, so there is nothing to absorb and nothing to break down. You keep your stack height for the entire time the product sits.

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Can it go through hydro cooling?

Yes. Near freezing water for an hour is the exact condition that destroys a wax carton and does nothing to ours.

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Can I re-ice product without repacking it?

Yes. Open it, re-ice it in place, close it. No transfer into a fresh box.

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What happens to the box when it is empty?

It comes back to us. The boxes travel with your product to the retailer, the retailer separates them out of the waste stream, we pick them up, process them, and the material goes back into new boxes. We run that loop ourselves rather than handing the material to an outside recycling company.

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How does the price compare to wax?

Close. Depending on your region and your box format it can go a couple of cents either way. Wax has been rising, and in some regions and some formats wax is already the more expensive box. We are not going to tell you we are always cheaper, because that is not true.

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When is the right time of year to be talking to you?

Before your season, or between seasons. Once you are in season you already know where your boxes are coming from and you do not have twenty minutes to look at a new one. The end of a season works too, because there is usually still time to geta trial order in and see how it runs.

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Ready to learn more, chat with our Sales Agent, Emma, 24-7? CLICK HERE:

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