What are the latest innovations at Glenroy? Why is it important to exhibit at Pack Expo Las Vegas? Tune in to hear what Evan Arnold, VP of Business Development at Glenroy has to say.
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Transcript
00:00:25 Sara Januszewski
All righty, well, I’m just going to go ahead and get right into it. I want to welcome the six people that we have on right now to the 7th episode of the Flexible Packaging Round Table. Today we are speaking with our very own Evan Arnold, VP of Business Development at Glenroy about the Recycle-ready premade STANDCAP Pouch and Pack Expo Las Vegas. And I am your host, Sara Januszewski.
00:01:04 Sara Januszewski
So, Evan, to start here, can you speak about the latest innovations at Glenroy? Specifically, the Recycle-ready premade STANDCAP Pouch and the benefits of it.
00:01:17 Evan Arnold
Sure, absolutely, and thanks for having me on again. I got to say this little round table you’ve put together the last six months has been really fun to watch and curate everybody together. So yeah, we’ve been hard at work at Glenroy working on really advancing our mono material platform and speaking specifically about the Recycle-ready premade STANDCAP Pouch. This is a pouch that is designed against the parameters put out by APR (Association of Plastic Recyclers) and what Colgate put together for the curbside recyclable toothpaste tube. And we developed a three-layer polyethylene pouch partnered with our friends at Charter to bring this forward and what we did was design it to meet that, and it utilizes some very innovative materials to allow it to be both clear and opaque and run through all of our equipment and seal very much like all of our other STANDCAP premade pouches. So, that is currently in for APR testing right now and we’re hopefully awaiting that approval. The next step with that is really bringing together the MRFs (Materials Recovery Facility) and making sure everybody has the ability to recycle these tubes across the country.
00:02:41 Evan Arnold
But you know those benefits are really setting up the industry for the future of flexible packaging and I got to just make a comment, we just came off our Flexible Packaging Association (FPA) meeting and it was just an extremely exciting time. The industry is really working together to help solve some of the challenges that flexible packaging has and really to explain the benefits of flexible packaging and drive innovation towards recycling. I came out of that meeting just incredibly enthused and one of our friends watching here, Jonathan, put together the Emerging Leaders Council and it’s really cool to see leaders across the industry working together to drive the next chapter of the flexible packaging industry and working together to drive recycling and the benefits of that. So, I’m really excited.
00:03:45 Sara Januszewski
Fantastic and can you explain the trend shift that you are seeing towards the mono materials and explain further what that means for our environment?
00:03:58 Evan Arnold
Sure, I mean typically flexible packaging is many different layers of flexible materials put together to provide barrier, protect the product, and protect integrity there. What we’ve seen is as we move towards recycling, we need to utilize those mono materials, so putting together like materials to still create barrier, still create efficiencies across our customers lines and still protect the product and you’re seeing a major shift towards that right now in Europe they’re working on polyethylene and polypropylene and in the US, we’re focused on the same things and setting ourselves up for that future state of recycling. So, right now, the biggest flexible recycling is our store drop-off program which accepts all mono material polyethylene, and what we need to do is set up the MRFs to be able to handle all these different types of mono materials. I see a future where we’ll be able to recycle all of our flexible packaging that uses less plastic than our rigid counterparts and now, we can set them up and be ready for when we can get that innovation within recycling.
00:05:12 Sara Januszewski
Great and moving on, Glenroy is exhibiting at Pack Expo Las Vegas this year. Can you speak further about why that is important and touch on what you are most excited for?
00:05:28 Evan Arnold
Well, it’s important that we’re there because we’re showing and talking about how we can help the industry drive recyclability, and we want to get out there and reconnect with everybody. It’s been so long, and I know we’re still in this pandemic state, but we need to get out there. We need to be a part of the solution and we need to get out there and reconnect with people. And I’m super excited about getting out there and seeing the whole industry of packaging really driving a lot of this excitement, being able to reconnect and a lot of times those reconnections can spark new innovations and get people talking. I’m just really excited to kind of be back and at that same excitement I felt last week about the industry coming together. When you’re in person there is nothing like that and so being able to get out and be back and talk is really exciting. And what am I most excited for? To connect with people first and foremost. I’m excited to get back out and talk about things again. So small plug here, but we are presenting at the innovation stage at 11:00 o’clock on Monday morning in Las Vegas and we’re going to be talking about how Glenroy worked with a few of our customers to increase the shelf life of their food products and flexible packaging has many benefits from the sustainability things that we’ve talked about but also preserving food to a state.
00:07:13 Evan Arnold
One of the biggest challenges we have in this country is food waste and how can we, as a packaging supplier, not only help our customers sell more of their products but keep their products fresher longer and I’m excited about some of the solutions that we’ve come up with and how we can tackle that together. And I think, just these incredible benefits we have, we can continue to showcase that, and I’m excited to talk about that. I’ve spoken before about different innovations, and this is kind of a different spin on that and how we can help some of these challenges that our country faces and the world faces and how flexible packaging can really help that.
00:08:00 Sara Januszewski
And I too am very excited. It is my first Pack Expo so I’m looking forward to walking around getting the flow of the land, speaking to people, just learning more about this industry. And people can also watch out because I will be all over social media doing some Q&A’s, I will be videoing some of Evan’s innovation session as well on Monday so everyone can keep out for that as well.
00:08:28 Evan Arnold
So, I got to put you on the spot a little bit here, Sara. Have you been researching at all? Like what are the cool things you want to see and are there any cool innovations even outside of flexible packaging? I know when I went the first couple of times, I went I was so blown away by the robotics and all the huge systems that are set up there and it really sparks that excitement.
00:08:49 Sara Januszewski
Yeah, I don’t even know what to really expect going into this, so I’m just going in with an open mind. I’m really looking forward to seeing you know things besides flexible packaging, like the people that, our manufacturers that we work with or like you said, robotics, anything on the floor, I am just open minded. I am excited to get out there.
00:09:14 Evan Arnold
Yeah, what’s really cool is you can see the whole value chain, so our films running on a bunch of different machine manufacturers so we can take our customers right over there and show them how our film runs. We can go meet with our suppliers and there’s a lot of new exciting suppliers out there showcasing innovation that I’m excited to meet and talk to and seeing that whole huge value chain is really cool, so I’m excited for you, for your first Pack Expo.
00:09:44 Sara Januszewski
Thank you. Yeah, and it’ll be cool to meet some of the people that I’ve spoken to on the Flexible Packaging Round Table in-person. I’m definitely looking forward to that.
00:09:58 Evan Arnold
What’s our booth number there, Sara?
00:10:03 Sara Januszewski
We will be at booth SU-7925 which is the South Upper Hall and that is where you can find Glenroy and learn more about our recycle-ready premade STANDCAP Pouch and all the other great sustainable initiatives that we are working on. So again, we are so excited to reconnect face to face at Pack Expo next week and meeting some of the people that are on here. Hope that we can see you there.
00:10:34 Evan Arnold
Yeah, I look forward to seeing everybody. If anybody has any questions, but other than that, I look forward to reconnecting with everybody and seeing everybody at the booth.