Top Folding Carton Converters — Up Is Up

Participants of packagePRINTING’s Folding Carton Converters survey are experiencing growth in their businesses.

September 2008 by Missy Smith

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The results of this year’s Top Folding Carton Converters survey reflect the growth reported by package printers in this month’s State of the Industry Report on folding cartons, despite industry reports that the market is hurting. A majority of participants in the survey reported growth.

About 80 percent of converters said that their businesses grew in 2007, while the remaining companies said business stayed the same. And, 77 percent of participating converters plan to expand into new areas of package printing. This number increased slightly from last year. Most respondents reported that they would like to look into new end-use markets, as well as new folding carton processes.

Capacity utilization in 2007 was relatively low. The percentage of converters that operated at capacity levels of between 80 and 90 percent was 40 percent, while about 53 percent are operating at less than 80 percent. Only one respondent reported using more than 90 percent of its capacity to manufacture folding cartons.

Most of the folding carton converters that participated in the survey reported using offset printing (71 percent) in 2007. This is consistent with the amount of offset entries packagePRINTING received for this year’s Excellence Awards. We received 35 entries in the folding carton category; 34 entries were printed with offset technology. In addition, about 43 percent of converters reported using flexography in 2007 to print their folding cartons.

Check out some of the top folding carton converters taken from packagePRINTING’s readership survey by clicking on the thumbnail images below. pP

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