Green Bay Packaging Happily Boxed Into North Metro

Green Bay Packaging’s Arkansas Kraft Division has produced custom packaging in the Conway area for 53 years.

Online shoppers may be bypassing the big box stores, but they can’t bypass the boxes.

That’s where manufacturing mainstay Green Bay Packaging comes in.

The custom packaging supplier, with its Arkansas Kraft Division facilities based near Conway for 53 years, is enjoying a spike in business thanks to the rise of E-commerce. More people shopping online through Amazon and eBay means a greater need for shipping containers.

“The online buying, that’s spurred a lot of growth in the corrugated industry,” said Arkansas Kraft Division Vice President Will Cone. “We’re reaping the benefits of that right now.”

Green Bay Packaging is a Wisconsin-based supplier of custom packaging, folding cartons, shipping boxes, store displays, coated label stock and retail packaging. Founded by George Kress in 1933, the company has 31 locations nationwide and its Arkansas mill in Morrilton is a fully integrated pulp and containerboard mill producing both kraft linerboard and corrugated medium, the two types of paper comprising corrugated containerboard.

A lumber division is located in Plumerville and a fiber and resource division is also in Morrilton.

Cone, a 31-year veteran of the paper industry and a 21-year employee of Green Bay Packaging, said demand for the company’s products is as great as he’s seen in his career.

Cone estimated the daily output of the two paper products used in making boxes —  kraft linerboard and medium — is close to 1,450 tons, with another 800 tons coming from the nearby recycling facility. 

MANUFACTURING PANELISTS

Chris Boudrie
Plant Manager,
Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Bill Bruno
Vice President and General Manager, Snap-on Equipment

Will Cone
Vice President and General Manager, Green Bay Packaging, Arkansas Kraft Division

Steve Presley
Vice President and General Manager, Virco Manufacturing
Corporation

As one of the first mills of its kind to develop recycling technology, the Arkansas mill recycles fiber in various forms, using by-product sawmill chips for 25 percent of the wood used for the production of pulp and reducing the need for landfill acres used.

“It’s going well. As a company we’re growing,” Cone said. “We’ve been fortunate to have a significant amount of capital investment here for the last several years. This year is no exception. We’ll spend over $30 million of capital at this facility in 2018.”

With 385 employees and its main facility on 1,039 acres by the Arkansas River, the Arkansas mill has long enjoyed a strategic location in the Sun Belt from which it supplies its biggest customers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as well as a box plant in Tulsa and material for three corrugators in Green Bay.

From the start, Green Bay Packaging found a ready and willing workforce, not to mention nearby lumber resources, in Conway and the surrounding areas that help comprise the North Metro MSA.

“There’s quite a few counties we actually have employees in,” Cone said. “There’s no doubt the economic development of the entire region has supported people’s desire to live here and stay here and I think it allows us to attract people as well. And that’s important.”

The Conway area’s push toward economic development, infrastructure improvements and beautification also allows the Arkansas mill to make a run at skilled employees from places like Los Angeles.

“I think there was a lot of wisdom in the location that was chosen,” Cone said. 

The online retail boom only makes the decision look that much better.

“As a company we’ve actually grown at a slightly higher pace than the industry as a whole, so that’s been good to see too,” Cone said. 

See more about Conway’s economic growth at Outlook Conway.