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A PUBLICATION OF AICC, THE INDEPENDENT PACKAGING ASSOCIATION

September/October 2026 Volume 30, No.5

THE SHIFTING

STATE OF

SALES Corrugated manufacturers are revamping their digital strategies to better communicate product value and drive sales

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TABLE OF CONTENTS September/October 2026 • Volume 30, No. 5

COLUMNS

THE SHIFTING STATE OF SALES Corrugated manufacturers are revamping their digital strategies to better communicate product value and drive sales

BEYOND THE MIDTERMS Following the hot-button industry issues for the new Congress class SPECIAL SECTION: EDUCATION BUILT ON RELATIONSHIPS Your Association continues to accelerate professional possibilities

CHAIRWOMAN’S MESSAGE

MARKET INSIGHTS

LEGISLATIVE REPORT

ASK RALPH

ASK TOM

SELLING TODAY

ANDRAGOGY

LEADERSHIP

THE ASSOCIATE ADVANTAGE

WHAT THE TECH?

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

THE FINAL SCORE

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

NEW & RETURNING MEMBERS

MEMBERS MEETING

AICC INNOVATION

FOUNDATION FOR PACKAGING EDUCATION

INTERNATIONAL CORRUGATED PACKAGING FOUNDATION

BoxScore is published bimonthly by AICC, The Independent Packaging Association, PO Box 25708, Alexandria, VA 22313, USA. Rates for reprints and permissions of articles printed are available upon request. The statements and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the views of AICC. The publisher reserves the right to accept or reject any editorial or advertising matter at its discretion. The publisher is not responsible for claims made by advertisers. POSTMASTER: Send change of address to BoxScore, AICC, PO Box 25708, Alexandria, VA 22313, USA. ©2026 AICC. All rights reserved.

Visit www.NOW.AICCbox.org for Member News and even more great columns. Scan the QR code to check them out!

BOXSCORE www.AICCbox.org

OFFICERS Chairwoman: Terri-Lynn Levesque, Royal Containers Ltd., Brampton, Ontario, Canada First Vice Chairman: Joseph Morelli, The Morelli Group, Decatur, Illinois Vice Chairmen: Mike Schaefer, Tavens Packaging & Display Solutions, Bedford Heights, Ohio Eric Elgin, Oklahoma Interpak, Muskogee, Oklahoma Josh Sobel, Jamestown Container Cos., Cleveland, Ohio Immediate Past Chairman: Gary Brewer, Package Crafters, High Point, North Carolina Chair, Past Chairmen’s Council: Matt Davis, Packaging Express, Colorado Springs, Colorado President: Michael D’Angelo, AICC, The Independent Packaging Association, Alexandria, Virginia Secretary/General Counsel: David Goch, Webster, Chamberlain & Bean, Washington, D.C. Administrator, AICC Canada: Leah Gardiner Administrator, AICC México: Veronica Reyes DIRECTORS Great Lakes: Brock Welch, Welch Packaging, Elkhart, Indiana Midwest: Cassi Malone, Corrugated Supplies Co., Bedford Park, Illinois Northeast: Larry Grossbard, President Container Group, Wood Ridge, New Jersey Southeast: Chad Wagner, Peachtree Packaging & Display, Lawrenceville, Georgia Southwest: Jordan Dawson, Harris Packaging, Haltom City, Texas West: Sahar Mehrabzadeh, Bay Cities, Pico Rivera, Califormia (interim) AICC Canada: George Perreira, Moyy/Whitebird, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada AICC México: Jorge Ortega, Solemsa, Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico

OVERSEAS DIRECTOR Greg Jones, SUN Automation Group, Glen Arm, Maryland DIRECTORS AT LARGE Jenise Cox, Harris Packaging, Haltom City, Texas Sahar Mehrabzadeh, Bay Cities, Pico Rivera, California Casey Shaw, Batavia Container, Batavia, Illinois Stuart Fenkel, McLean Packaging, Pennsauken Township, New Jersey Jack Fiterman, Liberty Diversified International, Minneapolis, Minnesota EMERGING LEADER DELEGATES Evan Clary, National Corrugated Machinery, Hunt Valley, Maryland Cody Brant, Bobst North America, Parsippany, New Jersey Nick Catania, BHS Corrugated–North America, Aurora, Illinois ASSOCIATE MEMBER DIRECTORS Chairman: Jeff Dietz, Koenig & Bauer (US), Dallas, Texas Vice Chairman: Mike Butler, Domtar Packaging, Fort Mill, South Carolina Secretary: Brian Foley, Bobst, Phoenix, Arizona Director: Warren Bird, JB Machinery, Westport, Connecticut Immediate Past Chairman: John Burgess, Pamarco, Roselle Park, New Jersey ADVISORS TO THE CHAIRWOMAN Joe Palmeri, Jamestown Container Cos., Cleveland, Ohio Al Hoodwin, Michigan City Paper Box, Michigan City, Indiana Jeff Dietz, Koenig & Bauer (US), Dallas, Texas

PUBLICATION STAFF Publisher: Michael D’Angelo • mdangelo@AICCbox.org Editor: Virginia Humphrey • vhumphrey@AICCbox.org EDITORIAL/DESIGN SERVICES YGS Association Solutions • www.YGSAssociation Solutions.com Vice President, Association Solutions: Craig Lauer Creative Director: Mike Vucic Senior Managing Editor: Sam Hoffmeister Copy Editor: Steve Kennedy Art Director: Alex Straughan Account Manager: Jillian Mengel SUBMIT EDITORIAL IDEAS, NEWS, AND LETTERS TO: BoxScore@theYGSgroup.com CONTRIBUTORS Cindy Huber, Senior Director of Conventions and Meetings Chelsea May, Director of Operations and Events Laura Mihalick, Director of Conventions and Meetings Patrick Moore, Director of Membership Rebecca Rendon, Director of Education and Leadership Development Alyce Ryan, Director of Marketing ADVERTISING Chelsea May 703-836-2422 • cmay@AICCbox.org Patrick Moore 703-535-1394 • pmoore@AICCbox.org AICC PO Box 25708 Alexandria, VA 22313 Phone 703-836-2422 Toll-free 877-836-2422 Fax 703-836-2795 www.AICCbox.org

ABOUT AICC, THE INDEPENDENT PACKAGING ASSOCIATION AICC provides the education, tools, and information your company and employees need to thrive in the paper packaging industry. WHEN YOU INVEST AND ENGAGE, AICC DELIVERS SUCCESS.

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Chairwoman’s Message

Legacy in Action: Inspiring Tomorrow’s Leaders – A Final Reflection

s I conclude my year as chairwoman of AICC, I want to reflect on what has been the greatest honor of my professional career. When I introduced my theme, Legacy in Action: Inspiring Tomorrow’s Leaders, it was built on four guiding pillars: Mentor Intentionally, Empower Risk-Taking, Champion Inclusion, and Model Purpose. Together, these principles have shaped not only this series of articles, but my perspective on leadership itself. As the first Emerging Leader graduate to be elected chairwoman of AICC, I have had a unique perspective on what Legacy in Action truly looks like in practice. I would not be in this role today without the leaders who took the time to invest in me, challenge me, and believe in my potential long before I fully saw it in myself. That experience has shaped how I now view leadership—not as a position to hold, but as a responsibility to pass forward. We began with Mentor Intentionally, recognizing that leadership is rooted in those who take the time to guide, listen, and invest in others. We then explored Empower Risk-Taking, understanding that growth and innovation happen only when people are trusted to step into uncertainty. We moved into Champion Inclusion, reinforcing that diverse voices and perspectives strengthen every decision and every outcome. Finally, we focused on Model Purpose, the idea that leadership is ultimately defined by the example we set every day and the values we consistently live. None of this would have been possible without the people who have shaped my journey. Thank you to my amazing family, my Royal family, and especially Kim Nelson, my greatest mentor. Thank you to the associates and all the members I have had the privilege to meet and work alongside during my 11 years with AICC. I am also deeply grateful to the board and my trusted advisors—Al Hoodwin, Joe Palmeri, Jeff Deitz, Gary Brewer, Joe Morelli, and Gene Marino—for their guidance, support, and friendship. A special thanks as well to my support team, who connected with me in my early days in Emerging Leaders, Julie Elgin and Tiffanie Armstrong, both strong women who continue to inspire me. Lastly, I want to thank my Leadership Advisory Group and Scott Ellis for the years of support. Somewhere along the way, our LAG meetings became part strategy session, part therapy session—and I’m grateful they showed up for both. Serving as chairwoman has also given me a deeper appreciation for just how hard Mike D’Angelo and the entire AICC staff work every day to make this association what it is. We are truly fortunate to be part of such a committed and passionate community. My experiences with AICC Canada and AICC México, and the incredible people I have met across this journey, are memories I will cherish for a lifetime. Thank you for allowing me the privilege of representing you. As my time as chairwoman comes to an end, I want to celebrate and congratulate Mike Schaefer of Tavens Packaging & Display as he begins his role as AICC chairman. Mike, may your board meetings be productive, your flights be on time, and your inbox be merciful. Congratulations! My final thought is this: When we lead with others in mind, inspiring tomorrow’s leaders stops being a moment. It becomes a movement—and one I am proud to have shared with all of you.

Terri-Lynn Levesque Vice President of Administration, Royal Containers AICC Chairwoman

BOXSCORE www.AICCbox.org

Market Insights

Decoding Demand BY RYAN FOX

ackaging Corp. of America’s comments at Wells Fargo’s Industrials & Materials Conference on June 10 may provide an early indication of second-quarter box demand. Chief Executive Officer Mark Kowlzan called the quarter “very healthy,” with shipments at legacy plants up 4.5% in April and 3.5% in May. Though one producer’s results don’t establish an industry trend, they align with broader manufacturing indicators that have improved throughout 2026. The ISM Manufacturing PMI reached 54 in May, its highest reading in four years, as manufacturers continued to rebuild inventories following nearly two years of destocking. New orders have expanded for five consecutive months, production is growing, and customer inventories are still reported as unusually low. Though industrial sectors such as machinery, transportation equipment, electronics, and chemicals have led the manufacturing recovery, corrugated demand is ultimately more dependent on the movement of consumer and packaged goods through distribution networks. Inventory replenishment across supply chains creates a more supportive backdrop for box shipments. The improving industrial backdrop contrasts with consumer indicators. The consumer price index increased 4.2% year over year in May. Accordingly, the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey lingers near historically depressed levels, while retail sales growth has largely reflected higher spending rather than increased consumption. The divergence suggests inventory dynamics may be playing a larger role in corrugated shipments than end-market demand, as illustrated in the graphic at right.

6 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

It shows that, following a prolonged destocking cycle from late 2024 through 2025, manufacturers reduced inventories in response to weaker consumer spending, tariff uncertainty, and economic concerns. As inventories were drawn down to unusually low levels, even modest pickups in demand became sufficient to trigger replenishment. The resulting increase in production, orders, and shipments doesn’t necessarily reflect a broad-based economic boom. Rather, it suggests supply chains are rebuilding inventories that had fallen below sustainable levels. For packaging markets, the distinction is important: Corrugated demand can improve meaningfully during a restocking cycle even as consumer sentiment and end-market demand remain relatively subdued. Historically, announced price increases can trigger prebuying as customers attempt to avoid higher costs, yet our surveys suggest that this behavior hasn’t been widespread. Only

a handful of box producers reported customers placing such orders, particularly among distribution-related accounts. Containerboard buyers also noted little evidence of prebuying. Some took advantage of spot opportunities, which are typically limited in size and often involve odd specifications or aging inventory. The economics of a large-scale prebuy are challenging. A 5,000-ton-a-month corrugator attempting to buy an additional month’s worth of inventory at roughly $700 per ton would need to commit about $3.5 million in working capital before storage, handling, and financing costs. Though such a purchase might prolong a $50-per-ton increase, a large portion of those savings would be eaten by warehousing and logistics costs and the time value of money. The same constraints apply on the box side, where inventories require even more warehouse space and can tie up capital for longer. End users would need both

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Market Insights

the physical capacity to store additional supply and sufficient confidence in demand to justify the purchase. The more probable explanation for improving shipment trends is instead a combination of inventory replenishment and strengthening industrial activity, which looks more like a restocking cycle than the beginning of a boom. The Perfect Price Storm The corrugated industry’s benchmark containerboard index lifted prices again earlier this year, and we weren’t particularly surprised. To understand why, it helps to look back over the past 18 months. Major integrated producers have removed roughly 4 million tons of containerboard capacity since the beginning of 2025. The gap between demand and available capacity had widened to a point where mill operating rates were struggling to remain above 90%. Most of the exiting capacity was virgin-based and likely would have required significant capital spending to remain viable, particularly in recovery boiler systems. With potential investments approaching $300 million a site—often to modernize part of a mill without meaningfully improving machine speed or scale— closure became the more rational economic decision. Even after the closures, market conditions remained challenging entering 2026. Sluggish demand and tariff uncertainty weighed on box shipments, while winter weather likely cost the industry several shipping days during the first quarter. Industry shipments trailed the prior year by nearly 2%, and mill operating rates still struggled to stay above 93%. Exports helped offset some domestic weakness. Then the market changed. March box shipments increased 3.4% year over year, and box producers indicated that strength may have persisted through

8 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

much of the second quarter. As noted earlier, manufacturing activity appears to be improving as inventories are replenished after nearly two years of destocking. Domestic demand may have increased roughly 5% quarter over quarter just as mills were entering maintenance season. Most mills take maintenance downtime during the second quarter, ranging from a few days to several weeks depending on the scope of work. Scheduled downtime is a normal part of the industry’s operating rhythm and is generally reflected in capacity assumptions. This year, several mill officials told Green Markets that restart efforts proved more difficult than expected. In some cases, machines required an additional week or more to return to normal operating levels after maintenance was completed. Those lost tons aren’t reflected in published capacity figures. As one paper seller told Green Markets, “Downtime may be baked into capacity, but lost productivity is not.” Another seller suggested investors should expect productivity to emerge as a recurring theme during second-quarter earnings discussions: “Expect to hear that a lot.” The productivity challenges weren’t limited to scheduled maintenance. A fatal accident at Nippon Dynawave’s Longview, Washington, facility also disrupted production at NORPAC, which relies on Nippon for steam and power as part of the former Weyerhaeuser complex. The outage affected the availability of both linerboard and medium grades at a time when inventories were already tightening. Several buyers said some orders were canceled due to limited availability. NORPAC’s recent acquisition by International Paper may become a focus for independent buyers, particularly if fewer tons are ultimately made available to the open market.

Operating data due at the end of July may show the industry running near 93%–94%, a level that wouldn’t normally suggest severe tightness. Yet the figures may mask a much tighter supply situation if mills struggled to ramp up following outages. Inventories that appeared comfortable at roughly 4.5 weeks at the end of the first quarter may have been depleted quickly, while lead times stretched to six weeks from four almost overnight. Orders that previously arrived on time began showing up days or even weeks late. Even some integrated producers were said to be unable to find supply. Meanwhile, demand was no longer deteriorating. Driven by inventory replenishment, improving industrial activity or both, box orders increased just as supply was becoming less reliable. That combination may explain the industry’s latest round of price increases: The market found itself caught between recovering demand and impaired productivity and turned to pricing to restore balance. The next test is whether those increases hold. Industry operating data should provide a clearer picture of what actually transpired during the quarter. Major integrated producers’ reported shipment growth will be a key data point, along with exports. If low-priced export tons continue to move aggressively into overseas markets, domestic buyers may challenge the sustainability of higher prices. However, if inventories have truly been drawn down and productivity remains challenged, the industry’s pricing power may prove stronger than many expected at the start of the year. Ryan Fox is a corrugated market analyst at Green Markets, a Bloomberg company. He can be reached at rfox93@bloomberg.

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Legislative Report

The Middle East Conflict Is Affecting Box Manufacturers – and a Reason for Hope

or AICC members, the effects of the Middle East conflict may feel indirect, but they are increasingly real. Although boxmakers are far removed from the front lines, global instability has a way of showing up on the plant floor—through higher costs, delayed materials, and growing uncertainty about customer demand. The most immediate pressure point is energy. Our manufacturing, from paper production to converting operations and transportation, is energy-intensive. When geopolitical tensions push oil and natural gas prices higher, manufacturers often see increased costs for freight, utilities, substrates, inks, adhesives, and petrochemical-based inputs. Rising fuel costs increase the expense of getting finished products to customers. Supply chains are another challenge. Ongoing disruptions to shipping routes tied to the region have increased transit times and freight expenses in parts of the global logistics network. Even domestic boxmakers can feel the impact when machinery components, replacement parts, specialty papers, or chemicals sourced overseas become harder to secure or more expensive to transport. For many packaging companies, uncertainty may be the greatest burden. Customers in manufacturing, retail, and consumer goods sectors are watching costs closely and adjusting inventories cautiously. That hesitation can translate into uneven order patterns for box manufacturers. Capital investment decisions, whether expanding capacity, upgrading equipment, or hiring, become harder when input costs and demand forecasts remain difficult to predict.

10 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

Yet, there are reasons for cautious optimism. AICC members have become more resilient since the supply chain disruptions of recent years. Many converters and suppliers are better prepared today than they were just a few years ago, with more diversified and alternative networks, stronger inventory strategies, greater visibility into logistics risks, more efficient installed machinery, and the promise of AI. The essential nature of AICC members’ products also provides stability. Regardless of economic conditions, products still need to move through supply chains. E-commerce, food and beverage distribution, industrial shipping, and consumer staples continue to require corrugated packaging, helping sustain a baseline demand even during periods of volatility.

A prolonged conflict would continue to pressure costs and margins; a period of de-escalation would hopefully bring relief to energy markets and improve business confidence. As I write these words, there is no clear path. For boxmakers, the near-term outlook may remain challenging. But our industry has demonstrated a capacity to adapt— and that resilience may prove to be one of our greatest competitive advantages in uncertain times. Eric Elgin is owner of Oklahoma Interpak and chairman of AICC’s government affairs subcommittee. He can be reached at 918-687-1681 or eric@okinterpak.com.

New & Returning Members

Welcome, AICC’s New Members! FOREST-PKG MATTHEW WRIGHT Founder 27131 Calle Arroyo, Suite 1722 San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675 www.forest-pkg.com ARNOLD PACKAGING COMPANY MICK ARNOLD Owner/President 1900 Finishing Mill Rd., Suite 100 Baltimore, MD 21219 443-649-5626 www.arnoldpackaging.com KEY CONTAINER CORP. DAVID STRAUSS President 21 Campbell St. Pawtucket, RI 02861 800-343-8811 www.keycontainercorp.com

12 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

TRIAD SECURITIES CORP. SCOTT DASPIN Managing Director 111 Broadway, 11th Floor New York, NY 10006 212-349-1004 www.triadsecurities.com/ investment-banking-services

GREEN OX PALLET TECHNOLOGY LLC PETER WALSWORTH Director of Sales and Marketing North America 12352 Market Dr. Oklahoma City, OK 73114 720-276-8013 www.greenoxpallets.com

TANNIN CORPORATION RICHARD J. ENOS Account Executive 65 Walnut St. Peabody, MA 01960 978-532-4010 www.tannincorp.com

PROBIN GLOBAL LEE UNDERWOOD Principal 152 County Rd. 1297 Cullman, AL 35058 256-507-9879 www.probinglobal.com THACKER INDUSTRIAL SERVICE COMPANY CLAYTON CUTBURTH Director of Inside Sales 6513 Midway Rd. Haltom City, TX 76117 817-834-2323 www.thackerindustrial.com

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Members Meeting

AICC México Celebrates 25 Years

Photos courtesy of AICC.

rom May 17 to 20, more than 120 AICC members from Mexico, Canada, and the United States gathered in the resort city of Cancún to celebrate a major milestone: the 25th anniversary of AICC México. The occasion was marked with a fitting celebration, featuring a dynamic speaker program, a golf tournament, a gala dinner, and an AICC México Hall of Fame induction ceremony—creating an experience that was both festive and deeply meaningful. Attendees arrived at the beautiful AVA Cancun Resort and kicked off the event with a poolside, oceanside cocktail reception that set the tone for the days ahead. The formal program opened the following morning with welcoming remarks from AICC México President Jorge Ortega, AICC President Mike D’Angelo, and AICC Chairwoman Terri-Lynn Levesque. A presentation on the Mexican economy by Rodrigo Pacheco followed, providing attendees with timely economic insight. A highlight of the opening day was the highly anticipated Founders Panel, featuring Humberto Trevino, Marco Ferrara, Brad Hughes, José Díaz, and Steve Young. The panel reflected on the formation of AICC México, sharing stories of its early

Attendees enjoy an evening cocktail reception at the AVA Cancun Resort.

years, growth, and significant accomplishments over the past quarter century. A gala reception and dinner took place with a video montage celebrating 25 years of AICC México. AICC México also inducted David Yáñez of BCM Inks Mexico into its Hall of Fame—a very worthy choice. Day two delivered a high-energy experience with an engaging presentation by Jorge Rojas, followed by former AICC Chairman Gary Brewer’s industry-focused session, Grit and Growth. The morning program concluded with 24 golfers taking to the challenging layout of the AVA golf course. The final day of the celebration featured keynote speaker Fernando Parrado, survivor of the historic Miracle in the Andes. Parrado inspired attendees with a powerful message about resilience, determination, and the extraordinary results that can be achieved through teamwork in the face of impossible odds. AICC México and AICC extend sincere thanks AICC leaders with keynote speaker Fernando Parrado (third from left) and his wife, Veronique (second from left). to Platinum Sponsors

14 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

The Founders Panel featured reflections on the genesis of AICC México and its early years.

Former AICC Chairman Gary Brewer leads a session focused on industry fervor.

Kolbus and Amtech, as well as other sponsors Alliance, BCM Inks Mexico, BW Papersystems, Carton.com, Central Pack, Crespel & Deiters, EAM Mosca, Fosber, Global Boxmachine, and SUN Automation Group. Their generous support helped make this milestone celebration possible.

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Machinery and Handling for the Corrugated Board Industry

Ask Ralph

Robust, Resilient Corrugated Packaging

n the last issue of BoxScore, we talked on this subject but with a focus on small-flute and microflute constructions and unique ways of testing their strength properties. Any observations and thoughts on how the column of produce boxes failed? (See the photo below). Notice, it was not a gradual collapse but one in which the two bottom boxes on the pallet load gave way.

All the aspects that go into designing, combining, and converting perfect packaging are often forgotten. In the past, we techie people always referred to “retained compression” at the end of the distribution channel, but we are not hearing this newer term from members and their customers. The Chalmers DST (see image at top right) has the ability, with a very small sample size, to measure the amount of crush of a sheet in the fluting and combining process. This is also true of the loss of sheet integrity through the converting process. The test machine will not measure the quality of slotting, scoring,

16 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

and square of the finished box and how robust a package is. As of this writing, 70 have been sold in the United States. The significance of the test machine and its results is that it begins to predict actual four-point bending stiffness and other elements of box compession after ECT represents 75% of total top-to-bottom compression. But these properties do not fully estimate the robustness of a box. To really get a complete picture of the full integrity of a corrugated box, one must follow International Safe Transit Association protocols, in which the package goes through a succesive series of tests including

tumbling, dropping on three sides, corner drops, vibration, and compression. AICC has many resoures to assist you in its brochures, searchable BoxScore articles, and over 3,000 searchable AskRalph responses on NOW.AICCbox.org.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES In How to Get the Best Box is a section on “The Strong Box.” You can find some of the elements to consider in engineering robust corrugated packaging. Reach out to Ralph Young at askralph@AICCbox.org to get a copy. Another resource worth checking out is Woodpack Global (www.woodpackglobal.org). The organization has software to help in determining pallet patterns and stacking heights.

Ralph Young is the principal of Alternative Paper Solutions and is AICC’s technical advisor. Contact Ralph directly at askralph@AICCbox.org about technical issues that impact our industry.

Ask Tom

Warning Signs, Leading Indicators, and the Risk of Not Doing Something BY TOM WEBER

“I

should’ve seen this coming,” he told me. “I just kept hoping it wouldn’t really happen.” That phone call still troubles me. This isn’t a story about a bad businessperson. This is a story about a longtime packaging leader having the warning signs and leading indicators and not doing anything about it. And in this industry, that gap between seeing something and doing something about it is the difference between leading a company that’s growing and one that’s slowly running out of time. I’ve spent my career in packaging, and over the last decade or so, I’ve consulted with two kinds of leaders who really stand out to me. The first kind keeps doing what has always worked. Making small adjustments at the margins and hoping that their dog-eared playbook continues to deliver. The second one stays restless and curious, as they are always learning and always asking questions. They are also striving, along with their team, to position their companies for what’s next, trying to anticipate the future. To me, the second group is winning, not because they’re smarter but because they’ve built a set of habits that allow them to be honest with themselves about where the gaps are and are open to ideas in how to fill them. Four Traits That Help Define Those Who Thrive to Improve

the gap between seeing the signal and doing something about it. It’s about being willing to abandon what’s not working anymore, even when it’s something you’ve built and you’re proud of. The market has moved on, customers have moved on, and it’s time for you to move on. MULTITALENTED

The best print and packaging leaders I’ve ever seen have been genuinely fluent across all aspects of the business. They could walk into a pressroom floor, spot a production bottleneck, and help the operator work through it. Then, they’d sit down with the CFO, hold a real conversation around the financials, and close it up by solidifying a strategic partnership over dinner. They weren’t a superhero, but they were engaged and knew their business.

ANTICIPATION BE CURIOUS

AGILIT Y

As in a good basketball player, agility is the ability to pivot without losing your footing. Agility isn’t about being impulsive either. To me, it’s about shortening

18 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

know what you might find out. The fact is, though: Curiosity is underrated as a trait. It won’t show up on your financials. But it is the engine behind almost every good strategic decision I’ve seen made in this industry. It’s asking your largest client about what keeps them up at night and having the courage to actually listen to the answer. It’s reading and learning from outside of the packaging industry, because the ideas that could reshape our businesses are often coming from somewhere else first. It’s being willing to say “I don’t know” in a room where perhaps you’re expected to know everything. The ones that scare or worry me are the ones who have stopped being surprised. They have all the answers for everything— usually before the question is even finished.

Why is it that some of the top packaging executives always have time to attend the conferences, the shows, the peer groups, and more? They are curious, they’re lifelong learners, and their view is, you never

Some of the best leaders see what’s happening around the curve before they’re in it. Anticipation is different from trying to predict the future. You just need to stay close enough to the edge of what you’re doing and the clients you’re working

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with so that you can see the signals early. You have to ask more than “what do my clients need today?” You’ll actually have to ask and anticipate what they may need in three years. Will you still be the one relevant enough to help them? This means paying attention to your clients and in the markets surrounding you. It means watching how the next-generation clients—the ones 35 and under right now—are making decisions and learning what they actually value. It may also mean doing some “what if” planning that goes beyond just the annual strategic offsite. Have that honest conversation about the two or three different future paths that could unfold and what you should do in each one of them. This could be a great exercise for your senior leadership team to see how they think and anticipate beyond the curve. Now for the Fun Part Rate yourself from 1 to 5 on those four traits. A few things to keep in mind as you do this: First and foremost, you don’t need to be a superhero. That’s right, you don’t need to have the top score in all of these. Nobody really does. The goal here is much more about self-awareness. A leader who knows they are a 2 in a certain area and builds a team around that gap is far better positioned than one who doesn’t know it’s a gap at all. The next step comes to having someone else do this about you. This could be a trusted peer, a senior member of your team, or better yet, your significant other. Compare the scores. The gaps between how you see yourself and how others see you are usually where the most important work can be accomplished for the largest gains! Tom Weber is president of WeberSource LLC and is AICC’s folding carton and rigid box technical advisor. Contact Tom directly at asktom@AICCbox.org.

20 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

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Selling Today

Hiring the Right Team for SEO and AI-Driven Lead Generation BY TODD M. ZIELINSKI AND LISA BENSON

any box plants’ sales and marketing efforts reach a similar point: Leadership notices that the website is not generating enough qualified inquiries, sales are chasing too many weak opportunities, and competitors are showing up more often when buyers search online. Often, the first instinct is to hire someone internally. Hiring can be the right move, but only if the company is clear about what the person is expected to do. In the past, SEO and website lead generation were often treated as one job, even though they required multiple distinct skill sets. Today, good search engine optimization (SEO) remains important, but the emergence of AI tools has given us multiple ways to find answers. SEO now includes traditional

22 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

SEO, answer engine optimization (AEO), and generative engine optimization (GEO). Expecting one person to own strategy, content, search visibility, website performance, CRM data, reporting, campaign execution, and sales follow-up usually leads to disappointment. This is similar to hiring for sales. A salesperson who is excellent at growing existing accounts may not be the right person to develop new business from scratch. A salesperson with a strong network may still struggle when that network runs out. The issue is not always effort or intelligence. The issue is role fit. The same fit problem shows up in marketing. A good graphic designer may not understand technical SEO or how to produce content for generative AI. A strong

writer may not know how to structure a lead generation campaign. A marketing coordinator may be organized and hardworking but lack the experience to build a strategy. A senior strategist may know what needs to be done but may not be the person who should write every page, build every email, fix every form, or clean every report. Before hiring, outsourcing, or assigning the work to someone already on staff, leadership should define what the company actually needs. SEO Is Not a Single Task Often, SEO is mistakenly thought of as a single activity. The thought process goes something like this: Someone “does SEO,” the website starts ranking, and leads come in. However, that is not how it works.

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For a box manufacturer, SEO, GEO, and AEO must connect search behavior with real buyer needs. A buyer may search for custom corrugated boxes, retail displays, protective packaging, heavy-duty shipping boxes, food packaging, or even cardboard boxes. Some searches come from serious buyers, but others come from students, consumers, job seekers, or people looking for a single box. High-volume website traffic and brand visibility for its own sake shouldn’t be the goal. You do not want to attract every visitor. You want to attract the right visitors and give them enough useful information to take the next step. That requires more than putting keywords on a page. Knowledge of markets, products, equipment, plant capabilities, minimums, lead times, certifications, design support, testing, and service area is needed. It also requires a website that search engines and generative AI can read, pages that answer buyer questions, and a conversion path that makes it easy for the right prospect to ask for help. Search engines and AI answer tools look for experience, expertise, authority, and trust, and they need clear signals that the content comes from people who understand the product, the buyer, and the manufacturing process. The content should reflect real plant capabilities, actual buyer questions, and subject matter expert input. Implementing SEO, GEO, and AEO takes many skill sets. One person may be strong in one or two parts of the work, but very few people are strong across all parts of the process. Website Lead Generation Is More Than Form Fills Website lead generation is often misunderstood because companies focus on activity instead of prospect fit. More website traffic does not always mean more opportunities. Similarly, more form fills do not always mean more qualified leads. A packaging manufacturer needs leads that match the company’s business model. A sheet plant,

24 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

a full-service corrugated manufacturer, a folding carton producer, and a specialty display company may all need different opportunities. Some want regional manufacturing accounts. Some want high-volume recurring work. Some want complex packaging projects in which design and testing matter. Some need to protect production capacity from low-fit quote requests. Because of this, lead generation has to start with business direction. What type of work is profitable? Which industries are worth pursuing? What size customer fits the plant? Which products should be emphasized? Where does the company have a real advantage? Without those answers, marketing can create activity that keeps people busy, but all the while, sales is still saying, “These are not the right leads.” Internal knowledge is critical for this. An outside writer or agency cannot guess which accounts are good for the business. Sales and leadership have to define that. Marketing can help turn it into content, campaigns, search strategy, and reporting, but the starting point has to come from a business decision. The Risk of Hiring a Marketing ‘Unicorn’ Many companies try to solve the problem by hiring one person who can “handle marketing.” The job description often includes website updates, SEO, social media, email campaigns, trade shows, brochures, photography, CRM reporting, lead generation, branding, and sales support. It may also ask for strategy, writing, design, analytics, and technical skills. However, a full-time SEO team, at a minimum, includes a strategist, a technical SEO specialist, a content writer, and a web developer. It makes sense to hire a team when SEO is a major revenue channel, the company has a large site with multiple product lines, and it has frequent content needs. There must be enough work to keep the team busy. For most independent packaging companies, hiring a full team doesn’t make

sense. A single person with the full skill set rarely exists at the salary most companies want to pay. When that person does exist, they usually have preferences and limits. This does not mean companies should avoid hiring internally. It means they should hire for the right role. Instead of asking, “Can we do this internally?” ask, “Which parts can we own well internally, and which parts require outside skill or capacity?” What Should Stay Internal Companies do not have to do every marketing task internally, but some parts should never be handed off completely. The company has to own its positioning, priorities, customer knowledge, and standards for what qualifies as a good opportunity. Sales and marketing must work together, and sales should be involved early. The sales team knows which questions buyers ask, which objections come up repeatedly, which industries are active, and which leads tend to waste time. Customer service and estimating may also see patterns that marketing doesn’t have visibility into. They know where requests encounter issues, what information is often missing from quote requests, and which jobs are poor fits before they ever reach production. Leadership also has a role. If the company wants to grow in food packaging, e-commerce, industrial packaging, retail displays, or another segment, marketing needs to know this information. If the plant is trying to fill open capacity in a certain product line, that information needs to be communicated. If the company wants fewer small one-time orders and more recurring manufacturing accounts, that changes the strategy. However, the owner, sales manager, or marketing coordinator doesn’t have to execute every tactic. But they must provide direction and make decisions. Without that internal ownership, outside help is forced to rely on guesswork.

CORRUGATED BOX INDUSTRY

• • •

Selling Today

Where Outside Help Often Makes Sense Outside help can make sense when the company needs skills that are hard to hire, hard to retain, or not needed full time. Technical SEO is a common example. A company may need someone to assess site structure, indexing issues, page speed, metadata, redirects, analytics, and search visibility, but it may not need a full-time technical SEO employee. Content is another area in which outside support can help, provided the writer understands manufacturing and knows how to interview subject matter experts. Packaging content cannot be generic. A page about custom corrugated packaging should not read as if it could apply to any supplier in any market. It should reflect how buyers evaluate strength, print requirements, order volume, tooling, testing, design support, sustainability requirements, fulfillment needs, and delivery constraints. The audience and what they care about should be the focus. It should not only be written for SEO (keywords), but also structured for AEO and GEO. Marketing operations may also require outside support. CRM setup, form tracking, email automation, data collection, and reporting often connect marketing, sales, and technology. These are operational system issues that, if ignored, can result in lost leads, unreliable reports, poor decision-making, and leadership losing visibility into what is working. The case for outside help is not that internal people are incapable. It’s just that the work may require specialized experience and enough repetition to do it well. A person who handles HR, customer communications, trade show planning, and brochures may be capable, but that does not mean SEO strategy and lead generation infrastructure should simply be added to their job. Outside agencies often stay closer to emerging marketing technologies because they work across multiple accounts, tools, platforms, and search changes. AEO

26 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

and GEO are current examples. This is useful only if the partner knows how to apply those tactics to the company’s real market. Anyone can claim to offer AEO, GEO, or AI-driven content support. The primary question should be whether they understand the industry, the buyer, the sales process, and the company’s actual capabilities. Without that knowledge, you will likely receive shallow content, weak positioning, or low-fit leads. Create a Team Model For most box manufacturers, the strongest model is a defined mix of internal ownership and outside support. Internal ownership includes setting priorities and the target market profile, providing expertise, and giving timely feedback. Outside specialists handle the work that requires deeper SEO, content, technical, website support, and reporting experience. Each person or partner should know what they own, what they review, and where decisions come from. This clarity prevents the common pattern in which one person owns it all and strategy, execution, sales feedback, and reporting blur together, making it harder to identify whether the problem lies in direction, implementation, lead quality, follow-up, or measurement. This structure also keeps hiring realistic. A company may need specialist input in several areas without needing every role to be full time. The internal lead keeps the work aligned with business goals, while external support fills skill or capacity gaps as needed. What to Define Before You Hire Before hiring or outsourcing, define the business problem first. A vague goal, such as “we need better marketing” or “we need more leads,” is much too vague to guide hiring decisions. Start with these questions: • Are we trying to increase traffic, improve brand visibility and expertise

in AI tools, improve lead quality, support sales, enter a new market, or fix reporting? • Which products, industries, or account types should marketing prioritize? • What information must come from sales, estimating, customer service, or leadership? • Which work needs to happen every week, and which work only needs specialist input at certain points? • How will we know whether the effort is producing the right opportunities? The answers to these questions help to clarify the hiring decision. The company can decide whether it needs an internal coordinator, a senior marketing hire, external SEO/AEO/GEO support, content support, technical support, or a mix of those roles. Remember, most companies do not need one person trying to carry all of SEO, AEO, GEO, content, reporting, website work, and lead generation. There should be a clear split of responsibilities. Decide what knowledge has to stay inside the company, where outside skills are needed, and how sales feedback will be communicated. When that structure is clear, the company is less likely to chase web traffic that does not fit, publish thin content, or judge success by the wrong numbers. Todd M. Zielinski is managing director and CEO at Athena SWC LLC. He can be reached at 716-250-5547 or tzielinski@athenaswc.com. Lisa Benson is senior marketing content consultant at Athena SWC LLC. She can be reached at lbenson@athenaswc.com.

Andragogy

We’re All Works in Progress BY JULIE RICE SUGGS, PH.D., AND ALLI KEIGLEY

ack-to-school season often brings to mind classrooms, textbooks, and students preparing for the next stage of their education. But learning isn’t confined to the classroom. In packaging, one of the most dynamic and interdisciplinary industries in the world, continuous learning is not optional—it’s essential. Whether you’re a packaging engineer, designer, sustainability specialist, supply chain manager, or educator, the industry is constantly progressing. New

28 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

materials enter the market. Regulations change. Consumer expectations shift. Technologies emerge. Sustainability targets become more ambitious. What was considered best practice five years ago may no longer be sufficient today. In many ways, we are all works in progress. That mindset has guided The Packaging School since its inception. Our mission has always been to provide accessible, relevant, and industry-aligned education

through a professional packaging curriculum developed at Clemson University and licensed by the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education (#5400). But remaining relevant requires more than simply creating courses—it requires continuously improving them. In 2025 alone, our team refreshed more than 50 lessons across our curriculum while also developing entirely new learning experiences to address emerging industry needs.

Andragogy

One example is our new elective course, reDesign Your Package. This hands-on, project-based course guides learners through a structured packaging design and redesign process using one of our case studies or a package from their own organization. The course represents a significant investment in experiential learning, featuring 180 lessons— including 85 video and voice-over lessons—and totaling approximately 60 hours of instruction. The development of a course at this scale reflects an important truth about education in technical fields: Learning is most effective when theory and practice work together. Professionals don’t just need information; they need opportunities to apply it. That same philosophy shaped many of our course enhancements throughout the year. And these updates were not just cosmetic fixes. Each revision was informed by current industry standards, peer-reviewed research, regulatory developments, and feedback from learners and industry professionals. The goal was simple: to ensure that what students learn today reflects the realities they will encounter tomorrow. Across multiple curriculum areas, traditional text-heavy lessons were transformed into more engaging and accessible learning experiences. In our Paperboard Cartons course, lessons such as “Paper vs. Paperboard,” “Finishes,” and “Printing on Paperboard” were redesigned into infographic-based and long-form visual formats that improve comprehension and retention. These resources were also made downloadable, allowing learners to build a library of reference materials they can revisit long after completing the course. Meanwhile, rapidly changing regulatory requirements demanded substantial updates within our Packaging Laws and Regulations curriculum. New lessons and resources covering topics such as extended producer responsibility, the European

30 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

Union Deforestation Regulation, tariffs, and the Single-Use Plastics Directive were developed to help learners understand how global policy changes are shaping packaging decisions. These updates reflect a broader industry reality. Packaging professionals today must understand far more than package specifications and manufacturing processes. They must navigate a landscape that increasingly intersects with environmental policy, global trade, corporate sustainability goals, and consumer expectations. Technology is also reshaping how professionals in the packaging industry learn and work. Several course updates incorporated emerging topics such as AI, digital workflows, and modern design tools. Lessons in areas such as structural design software and packaging development workflows were expanded to reflect current industry practices and innovations. Rather than treating these developments as future trends, we believe they should be integrated into today’s educational experience. Continuous improvement also extends beyond content itself. Throughout 2025, lessons were redesigned to support different learning preferences through downloadable PDFs, interactive infographics, click-through learning experiences, enhanced video content, and improved accessibility features. Glossaries across multiple courses were standardized and redesigned, discussions were migrated into more effective learning environments, and visual branding was updated to create a more consistent learner experience. While these changes may seem small individually, together they represent something larger: a commitment to meeting learners where they are and equipping them with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. The packaging industry often focuses on innovation in products,

materials, machinery, and processes. Yet innovation in education is equally important. Preparing the next generation of professionals—and helping current professionals remain competitive—requires an ongoing willingness to adapt, evaluate, and improve. That responsibility belongs to individuals and organizations alike—and it’s one we take very seriously. For professionals, continuous learning means remaining curious and investing in personal growth even after years in the field. For employers, it means supporting workforce development and encouraging skill advancement. For educational institutions, it means constantly evaluating whether the curriculum reflects the current state of the industry. No course is ever truly finished. No professional ever knows everything. No organization reaches a point where improvement is no longer necessary. Perhaps that’s the most valuable lesson of all. As another school year begins, it’s worth remembering that education is not a destination but a process. The most successful professionals are not those who have completed their learning journey; they are those who recognize that the journey never ends. In packaging, as in life, we are all works in progress. And that’s exactly what allows us to keep moving forward. Julie Rice Suggs, Ph.D., is academic director at The Packaging School. She can be reached at 330-774-8542 or julie@ packagingschool.com. Alli Keigley is production coordinator at The Packaging School. She can be reached at alli@ packagingschool.com.

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Leadership

The Power of Effective Delegation BY MATT EICHMANN

ere’s a scenario most owners and operators in the corrugated industry know well: Your best supervisor was promoted because they could outwork, outtroubleshoot, and outperform everyone on the floor. Now they’re a manager, and they’re still doing it all themselves. Every approval runs through them. Every problem lands on their desk. They’re working 60-hour weeks, their team is disengaged, and growth is stalling. That’s not a work-ethic problem. That’s a delegation problem. Delegation is one of the most important—and most misunderstood—skills in leadership. Done poorly, it creates bottlenecks and dependency. Done well, it multiplies your organizational capacity and directly improves your ability to scale.

Why Good Leaders Struggle to Let Go The leaders who struggle most with delegation are often your highest performers. Their careers rewarded them for doing—for personal speed, personal output, and solving problems faster than anyone else. Now they’re in a leadership role, and those same instincts work against them. The mental trap sounds like this: “I can do it faster myself. If I hand this off, it might not get done right. We can’t afford a mistake right now.” Here’s the hard truth: Sometimes you probably can do it faster. But that’s not the point anymore. Leadership isn’t about maximizing your personal output. It’s about building organizational capability. A leader who holds on to everything eventually becomes the constraint.

32 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

The Real Cost of Underdelegating In manufacturing and industrial operations, bottlenecks are measurable. You know exactly what a jammed press or line stoppage costs per hour. Leadership bottlenecks work the same way; they’re just harder to see on a P&L. When leaders fail to delegate effectively, decision speed slows because everything waits for one person, team members disengage when they’re never trusted with meaningful work, bench strength never develops—leaving you one resignation away from a crisis—and the leader burns out while the business plateaus. Capability cannot grow without controlled exposure and real ownership. That means leaders must sometimes tolerate short-term inefficiency to create long-term scale. That takes courage. Introducing the CAP Delegation Framework Most delegation fails not because of bad intentions but because of vague handoffs. No clarity on the outcome. No single owner. No consistent follow-up. The CAP Framework gives leaders a simple, repeatable structure to fix that: clarify, assign, progress. C: CL ARIF Y WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE

Most delegation failures start here. Leaders assign work without defining what success looks like. Before anything gets handed off, answer three questions: What’s the outcome? What’s the timeline? What are the constraints? One phrase to use before every handoff: “Here’s what good looks like. ...”

A: ASSIGN ONE OWNER

Shared accountability is no accountability. If five people are responsible, nobody is. Collaboration is fine, but one person must own the outcome, the decision, and the result. Name them explicitly. P: PROGRESS CHECKS, NOT MICROMANAGEMENT

Delegation isn’t abandonment. Strong leaders stay connected through short, consistent touchpoints. The question isn’t “Did you do what I said?” The questions are “What’s going well? What’s slowing you down? Where do you need support?” That’s coaching, not checking. The Bottom Line You didn’t build your operation by doing everything yourself forever. At some point, you hired people, bought equipment, and built systems to scale. Leadership capacity is no different. The best leaders aren’t the people doing everything themselves. They’re the people building teams that can perform without them standing in the middle of every decision. That’s how you create leverage. That’s how you scale. The CAP Framework won’t fix every leadership challenge. But it will stop the most common and costly one—leaders who delegate in name only, then wonder why nothing gets done. Matt Eichmann is founder of Catalyst Point Leadership Advisors. He can be reached at 614-512-2940 or matt@ catalyst-point.com.

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Member Resources

What Your Peers Are Seeing in the Market

ecent survey feedback from AICC members indicates several issues affecting independent packaging manufacturers across the industry. From pricing pressure and rising operating costs to leadership development and emerging technologies, the concerns members shared reflect broader trends shaping today’s business environment. The good news? AICC continues to expand its educational programs, peer networking opportunities, and leadership

resources to help members navigate an increasingly complex marketplace. Market Pressures The most common concern cited by members was customer pricing pressure, followed closely by increased competition, commoditization, and uneven demand. HOW AICC CAN HELP

Members looking to strengthen customer relationships and protect margins

have access to a variety of educational resources, including: • Sales and customer service training focused on value-based selling and customer communication. • Finance and cost management courses that help companies better understand pricing strategy, cost drivers, and profitability. • Peer groups and AICC events, where members can exchange ideas and learn how fellow independents are addressing similar challenges. Learn more at www.AICCbox.org/packu, www.AICCbox.org/pathways, and www. AICCbox.org/calendar. Rising Costs Market-driven operational and financial concerns ranked among the most frequently mentioned challenges in the survey. Members identified rising paper costs, freight expenses, energy prices, margin pressure, equipment limitations, and supply chain uncertainty as significant issues affecting day-today operations.

BOXSCORE www.AICCbox.org

AICC Innovation

HOW AICC CAN HELP

AICC offers educational resources designed to improve operational performance, including: • Operations and process improvement training. • Technical education for production teams. • Packaging University features more than 160 free online courses available to employees of member companies. Visit www.AICCbox.org/packu to explore available courses. Preparing for the Future Beyond immediate business pressures, members also identified several strategic priorities, including leadership succession, leadership development, extended

producer responsibility and sustainability expectations, market expansion, AI adoption, and regulatory changes. HOW AICC CAN HELP

To support long-term growth and organizational development, AICC offers resources such as: • Pathways to Success, AICC’s structured leadership and career development program. • Emerging Leaders program, designed for professionals under age 35 preparing for future leadership roles. • Upcoming free webinars and webinar recordings include: º Practical AI for Customer Service & Sales º Winning AI Search: How Packaging Manufacturers

Get Found, Recommended, and Chosen º A Revolution of Speed: How AI is Rewiring Packaging Manufacturing Workflows • Sustainability and regulatory education. • Business development, innovation, and market expansion courses. These programs help companies prepare future leaders while building the skills needed to compete in a changing marketplace. Learn more at www.AICCbox.org/ pathways, www.AICCbox.org/calendar, and www.AICCbox.org/webinars. Keeping Pace With Change Members also cited concerns surrounding tariff uncertainty, shifting political and economic conditions, and determining how best to adopt AI within their organizations. Trade policy continues to influence paper, recycled fiber, equipment, and broader supply chains. Meanwhile, advances in artificial intelligence are creating opportunities to improve efficiency, streamline administrative work, enhance customer service, and support better decision-making. Many companies are exploring where these technologies fit within their operations and how to implement them effectively. HOW AICC CAN HELP

AICC regularly provides timely education through webinars, articles, and on-demand programming covering emerging technologies, automation, business trends, and industry developments. AICC also gives Independents a policy voice through advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C., and in state capitals. Members can stay informed through NOW.AICCbox.org and continue building foundational business and technical skills through www.AICCbox.org/packu.

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Corrugated manufacturers are revamping their digital strategies to better communicate product value and drive sales BY M. DIANE McCORMICK

hen businesses today need a product or a solution, they turn to a trusted source for information—the internet. That’s where and how they find suppliers equipped to meet their needs, and sellers are adapting their sales approaches in response. “Most prospects now complete a significant amount of research before contacting a salesperson,” says George Perreira, vice president at Whitebird and Moyy in Hamilton, Ontario, and president of AICC Canada. “As a result, sales has shifted from providing information to providing insight. Customers aren’t looking for a product pitch. They’re looking for someone who can help them make the right decision.” As capacity to make boxes outpaces demand, and with prices rising due to forces beyond the control of buyers and sellers, the traditional landscape of corrugated packaging sales has shifted dramatically. “If someone’s calling you or emailing you, they already have it narrowed down to their top couple of choices,” says Todd Zielinski, managing director and CEO at Athena SWC. “They found everything they needed and researched what they needed online.” In this atmosphere, corrugated manufacturers are going on the offensive, revising their websites and social media strategies to share the practical value of their products and position sales to connect with—and ultimately clinch—the customer.

BOXSCORE www.AICCbox.org

A Sudden Shift atmosphere, but “the level of where you The numbers tell the story. spend your time has changed.” Today, 82% of B2B buyers in the However, self-education still can’t equip awareness stage use social media to many buyers to understand the technicaliresearch brands, and 65% of buyers ties and variations in corrugated products. would rather consume educational con“Customers often research solutions tent, such as e-books and white papers, before fully understanding the root cause before engaging with sales, according to of their challenge,” says Perreira. “Our market research platform Worldmetrics. role is to ask questions, understand their A whopping 94% of buyers are using objectives, and ensure they’re selecting generative AI to conduct their research, the right solution—not just the solution according to Forrester Research Inc. they initially found online.” Buyers are also doing their own validating, Sobel notes that Jamestown Container making them far likelier to demand posts content on social media—LinkedIn proof of claims from sales and marketing is a primary platform—to showcase instead of accepting promises. factual information and customer testiIn their searches, buyers are using AI to monials, all with the aim of informing compare suppliers, research technologies, prospects about available solutions. evaluate ROI, and prepare questions Projecting the power of customization before meetings, says Perreira. “AI helps to address thorny issues depends on them gather information quickly, but “getting as many of those capabilities out they still need industry experts to provide as possible.” context and real-world experience. “You can’t showcase everything you Josh Sobel first noticed the shift toward can do, but our website in particular digital-first selling during the COVIDdoes a good job of showcasing different 19 pandemic. things that we can do,” Sobel says. “We’ll “Buyers started to be more at home post different pictures or descriptions of in front of computers all the time,” says products that we’ve done in the past.” Sobel, business development manager From there, skilled salespeople are the for Jamestown Container Cos. “It gave ones steeped in the value and benefits of them the opportunity to search more—to products and services. search for the value they wanted and “We have to be the experts,” Sobel says. pinpoint what they were looking for.” “As much research as a prospect does and Plus, he adds, the digital age helps figures out on their own, we have to finish buyers find useful data and background that information transfer to them so that on a company’s specialties and capabilithey can make their final decisions.” ties, “so they’re armed when making those Sobel collaborates on the Jamestown initial calls.” online presence with teams in design, COVID “totally flipped our world production, and marketing. The team upside-down,” agrees Zielinski. “If posts about two customer case studies you’re not being found through your and testimonials per year. website or through AI-enabled tools, “If we feel like we’ve done a good job you’re missing a huge channel,” says with a customer and they’ll portray it well, Zielinski, whose firm provides outsource we’ll work with them to write a testimomarketing, new business development, nial,” he says. lead generation, and sales support Constant, multidisciplinary comservices, primarily in custom contract munication builds understanding of manufacturing markets across the what each department needs to succeed, country. Traditional sales survives this Sobel says. “You know that they have

40 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

a timeline they need to work with, and they need to understand what the messaging is here.” Sales should always be involved in website design and posts “because we hear customer questions every day,” says Perreira. “The best websites answer those questions before a prospect reaches out, helping build trust and making sales conversations more productive.” Consistency is key. “Sales, marketing, and communications need to tell the same story,” Perreira adds. “Marketing explains what a solution does, while sales explains why it matters. Customer success stories and real-world examples are often the most effective content.” The focus is on “providing value through educational content, case studies, videos, and industry insights,” he says. “When prospects find useful information, they’re much more likely to request additional information or start a conversation.” Case studies build credibility by giving potential buyers a look at how the provider solved the similar problems of similar companies, says Zielinski. “You want it to relate to them. You want to connect with them. That’s what’s important—the connection with them. It’s not just listing your capabilities. They’ve already heard that and seen that.” Data Story Jamestown tracks its website engagement metrics, finding areas of focus in pages and items that attract a lot of clicks—or areas requiring adjustment because they’re not getting clicks. Sobel also follows prospects on social media, relying especially on LinkedIn to track their interests based on their likes and comments. In this new era, sales “has become a relationship-driven business,” he says. Sales teams win leadership’s approval to spend time on online presentation and

outreach by “showing the value of relationships and how they help the company rather than just being out knocking on 25 doors.” “It’s natural that it’s going to benefit the company to take that extra time and cultivate that relationship, and a good salesperson is going to realize that, as well,” Sobel says. “Spending four or five hours on a prospect that’s going to buy from you is much more valuable than spending that same amount of time on five prospects that aren’t going to buy anything.” Most salespeople excel at “farming”—they are adept at talking about the benefits of packaging with customers—but few are equally strong

Sales teams win leadership’s approval to spend time on online presentation and outreach by “showing the value of relationships and how they help the company rather than just being out knocking on 25 doors.” —Josh Sobel, business development manager, Jamestown Container Cos.

BOXSCORE www.AICCbox.org

“If you’re not being found through your website or through AI-enabled tools, you’re missing a huge channel.” —Todd Zielinski, managing director and CEO, Athena SWC

“hunters,” on the prowl for prospects, says Zielinski. In this environment, today’s effective sales model positions salespeople to consume leads “versus having to go create them,” he says. Successful sellers sell on value and “how you’re differentiated from your competition.”

42 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

“Beyond what you just do, it’s the how you do it, it’s the way you deliver it, it’s how you’re solving a problem,” he says. “You’re reducing their operating overhead, improving quality, delivering on time so they can go to market and they can produce for their customer faster and get more dollars in the door.”

The differentiation approach bridges the gap between experienced salespeople who are retiring and young people who have the drive but lack the skills and know-how, says Zielinski. “How do I leverage my website? How do I leverage AI?” he says. “How do I develop a lead generation system that’s more repetitive, scalable, and repeatable without having the salespeople do that?” Well-crafted website content brings in new leads and sales while reducing the need to hire more sales staff, Zielinski says. In these cases, leadership recognizes the need for change and might reallocate the sales-rep hiring budget to restructuring the inbound system and growing sales. It’s a matter of leveraging the website, AI tools, messaging creation, and prospect list creation. The solution differs for each company, but “the bottom line is you’ve got to have a feeder system,” Zielinski says. “You’ve got to have some systematic process that continually develops new accounts and new opportunities.” Still Evolving Just when the non-IT world learned to understand SEO, along came the AI-driven AEO and GEO. Currently, Zielinski’s company, Athena, is integrating the tools into its systems— answer engine optimization (AEO), which structures content to appear in AI-powered searches, and generative engine optimization (GEO), which positions content for inclusion in summaries created by generative AI, such as ChatGPT. Search engine optimization remains the foundation for AI-enabled searches because people using search engines and AI prompts encounter the AI summary first and the links to potential solutions below, says Zielinski. “The same way search engines crawl and work for keyword searches on

“Marketing explains what a solution does, while sales explains why it matters.” —George Perreira, vice president, Whitebird and Moyy organic SEO is the same way they do it for AI-generated searches,” he says. “So you cannot do good AEO or GEO if you don’t have good SEO in place.” FAQ website pages are valuable tools for being found because they align with AEO’s question-and-answer format, Zielenski notes. Even outdated websites don’t require expensive redesigns, he adds. Start with a few pages and enable them for SEO, AEO, and GEO over three months. Then add pages as needed, and be patient. “Anything we do today, the impact won’t be seen from a lead flow or traffic standpoint for 60 to 90 days out,” he says. “It is

a marathon. It’s a long-term commitment. It’s not a flick of the switch.” Expanding the sales outlook When a prospect finds your company online, their need is immediate, which compresses the traditional sales cycle of outreach and relationship-building, Zielinski says. “You want them finding you, because if they don’t find you, they’re going to find a competitor, and they’re going to buy from them,” he says. “You’ve got to be able to funnel that channel in, whether it’s through traditional search, whether it’s through the AI summary and the

search, whether it’s through AI tools with prompts. You’ve got to be open for business for all.” As always, success in sales comes down to trust—and now, building that trust extends to the digital places where a corrugated manufacturer has a presence. “Companies need to recognize that long-term relationships create long-term value,” says Perreira. “Sales teams should be encouraged to share knowledge, contribute content, and engage with customers beyond the transaction. Trust is often the strongest competitive advantage a company can have.”

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44 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

M. Diane McCormick is a Pennsylvania-based freelance journalist and a frequent BoxScore contributor.

BEYOND THE

MIDTERMS

46 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

Following the hot-button industry issues for the new Congress class

BY ROBERT BITTNER

he 2024 U.S. elections returned Republicans to the White House and gave the party control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The subsequent two years have been tumultuous, however, and Republican control of Congress now is looking vulnerable; the November midterm elections could shift the landscape once again. What that might mean for boxmakers is anyone’s guess—and unpredictability is a hallmark of the current administration. Some issues split cleanly along party lines, making it easy to anticipate impact on the industry of either a Republican or Democratic Congress. For other matters, those lines are blurred.

BOXSCORE www.AICCbox.org

Global Oversupply Section 301 is a provision of the Trade Act of 1974, giving the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) authority to investigate foreign trade practices and then impose tariffs when those practices are found to “burden or restrict” U.S. commerce. It puts no ceiling on tariff rates and has no built-in expiration date. However, it requires a formal investigation and a public comment process before tariffs can take effect. Currently, there is one outstanding Section 301 investigation with relevance for boxmakers. That investigation is looking at structural manufacturing overcapacity in 16 world economies— including China, the European Union, and Mexico—that the administration argues depresses global prices and disadvantages U.S. producers.

That claim seems to run counter to the experiences of many independent U.S. boxmakers. “If there is global overcapacity, that’s surprising, because I’m seeing so many price increases going on right now,” says Oklahoma Interpak Owner Eric Elgin. A constriction within U.S. paper manufacturing has led to the rising costs locally. Meanwhile, all of that overseas excess is being kept out of the North American market by the relatively high cost of shipping. The administration’s concern is that when shipping costs eventually come down, the U.S. market will be flooded with inexpensive paperboard that could seriously disadvantage American manufacturers. In May, the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) testified before the USTR in support of its Section 301

Precision Anilox & Glue Roll Technology apexinternational.com

48 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

investigation. In an AF&PA press release, David Ross, the organization’s director of government affairs, was quoted as telling the USTR, “Trade policy shapes manufacturing decisions. We support a fact-based review of excess capacity, while avoiding measures that could put U.S. jobs, investment, or operations at risk.” He urged a careful, evidence-based approach to the committee’s investigation, which is currently ongoing. “AF&PA advocacy is centered on the people and communities our industry supports, not election results,” adds Julie Landry, AF&PA’s vice president of government affairs. “We want U.S. paper and packaging manufacturers competing on a level playing field globally,” backed by policies that facilitate “members’ ability to make essential products, invest in facilities, and support U.S. manufacturing jobs.” Implementation of Section 301 does not break down neatly along party lines. It was the basis for tariffs imposed by both the Biden and Trump administrations. However, Republicans have been particularly keen on the use of tariffs as bargaining chips; a Republican-led Congress would likely speed the investigation along. Taxing Labor As any boxmaker knows, “Labor remains a key cost driver,” AICC Now acknowledged this spring. “Retaining skilled workers has become more expensive, with real hourly wages for corrugated box plant employees rising nearly 50% over the past five years.” Nothing on the November ballot will change that. Hourly wages have climbed not because of Washington policy but because of a labor market with a scarcity of laborers. One issue on which labor costs and the midterms do meet is the “no tax on overtime” deduction. Included in 2025’s tax bill, the deduction allows eligible hourly workers to deduct up to $12,500

of overtime premium pay from their federal taxable income. The deduction is set to expire at the end of 2028. However, it may be an oversimplification to say that whichever party controls Congress after this fall will decide if that relief becomes permanent or disappears. While some Democrats have opposed the administration’s so-called One Big, Beautiful Bill Act—of which untaxed overtime is a part—others have pushed for the provision to be expanded onto additional classes of workers. It seems there are factions within both parties that could be swayed either way on the issue. Lukewarm on Heat Worker health is under discussion thanks to a pending OSHA workplace heat standard, developed to formalize and extend practices established by President Joe Biden’s National Heat Emphasis Program in 2022. That program has increased workplace inspections in industries where workers are at high risk for heat exposure. According to OSHA’s summary of its proposal, “This is a significant step toward a federal heat standard to protect workers. The proposed standard would apply to all employers conducting outdoor and indoor work in all general industry, construction, maritime, and agriculture sectors where OSHA has jurisdiction. The standard would require employers to create a plan to evaluate and control heat hazards in their workplace. It would clarify employer obligations and the steps necessary to effectively protect employees from hazardous heat. The ultimate goal is to prevent and reduce the number of occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities caused by exposure to hazardous heat.” Box plants—with corrugators, presses, and die cutters generating significant heat—would clearly fall within the scope of the proposal. AF&PA has come out in support of a rule, but the organization has

“Any federal standard should be practical, science-based, and flexible enough to work across diverse industrial settings.” —Julie Landry, vice president of government affairs, AF&PA reservations regarding the current proposal. “Worker safety is a core value across our industry,” says Landry. “On the heat rule, our view is straightforward: We support a federal rule that is performance-based, flexible, and that allows ongoing heat-safety programs and safety innovations to continue and advance.” However, she adds that “the current proposal does not provide enough flexibility to account for the varying industries, climates, and work settings that it would cover, and may even impede safety efforts. Whatever happens after November, our position stays the same: Any federal standard should be practical, science-based, and flexible enough to work across diverse industrial settings.”

If the Republicans retain control of Congress, OSHA’s proposal is likely dead. The Trump administration has taken no action since holding hearings last year. In addition, House Republican Mark Messmer (Indiana) introduced the “Heat Workforce Standards Act of 2025” (H.R. 6213) to repeal OSHA’s proposal outright. It was co-sponsored by 23 Republicans, representing 16 states, and supported by dozens of industry organizations. In April, eight Republican senators introduced their own version: the “Heat Workforce Standards Act of 2026,” which would stop the OSHA proposal from moving forward and block future administrations from introducing anything similar.

BOXSCORE www.AICCbox.org

“Let’s come up with regulations that keep people safe and keep people honest. Let’s stop making it so hard that the business isn’t worth doing anymore.” —Eric Elgin, owner, Oklahoma Interpak The Heat Emphasis program prompted roughly 8,000 heat-related OSHA inspections from its start to the end of the Biden administration. Within a six-month period under President Donald Trump’s leadership, all OSHA inspections dropped by nearly 20%. Democrats have been vocal about that shift, pressing OSHA for increased and more thorough on-site inspections, including those focused on heat. That seems likely to continue should they regain some control in November. Messages for the Hill “The midterms may change the pace or tone of policy debates, but they do not

50 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

change the need for sustained engagement,” Landry says. “No matter the midterm results, AF&PA will continue making the case for policies that support U.S. manufacturing, reflect how our paper mill systems actually work, and avoid unnecessary cost pressure on essential products.” If she could educate the new Congress about one aspect of the industry, it would be recycling. “One of the biggest misconceptions we still correct is that paper is often grouped into the recycling problem when, in fact, it is one of the country’s strongest recycling success stories. Treating highly recycled paper the same as harder-to-recycle materials

can raise costs and add administrative burdens without clear recycling gains.” Oklahoma Interpak’s Elgin would like Washington to address rising freight costs. “I realize that’s a geopolitical thing that the midterms aren’t going to solve,” he says. Even so, it is a significant daily challenge. “When I ship products to the West Coast, a truck used to be $3,000 for a trip to California. It’s now $5,000. I’m having to really pay attention to how I can defray costs and how I work with customers. I’ve had lots of conversations with customers about increasing quantities, pooling orders together, doing things like that to make their shipping more manageable.” Of greater concern, perhaps, are the ever-increasing regulatory requirements. “Too many regulations change so often that it’s hard to keep up,” Elgin says. “I think independents may be getting lumped in with the integrateds when it comes to the scale of the regulatory changes we see. I’d like policymakers to understand we’re in a completely different realm, especially at a company my size. “It’s probably asking too much, but I think it would be great if politicians would work together to come up with reasonable regulations,” he says. “Let’s come up with regulations that keep people safe and keep people honest. Let’s stop making it so hard that the business isn’t worth doing anymore. Because there is a point at which it would just be easier not to do it. “Regardless of what happens in November,” Elgin concludes, “I wish policymakers on both sides had a better understanding of how difficult it is to operate an independent manufacturing plant.” Robert Bittner is a Michigan-based freelance journalist and frequent BoxScore contributor.

Expanding your corrugating capabilities across the board.

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SPECIAL SECTION

EDUCATION BUILT ON

RELATIONSHIPS Your Association continues to accelerate professional possibilities BY REBECCA RENDON

52 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

MORE ON PACKAGING UNIVERSITY

ICC is entering an exciting new chapter in education, but as we look toward the future, one principle will remain at the center of our mission: People learn best when they learn together. One of the most special things about AICC is the way the Association facilitates genuine relationship-building. Networking receptions, golf outings, and industry events create opportunities to meet people, but some of the most valuable learning and professional growth happens when members have the time and space to build deeper connections. AICC intentionally brings people together so they can learn from one another, share challenges, exchange ideas, and form relationships that extend far beyond a single event or program. Through these connections, members are not simply building a professional network. They are developing trusted industry relationships that can help them solve problems, navigate tough decisions, and feel more connected to the industry they serve. Those relationships help keep talented people in the industry and make the industry feel like home.

Learning Together The success of programs such as Emerging Leaders, Next Generation Executives, Leadership Advisory Groups, and Women in Packaging demonstrates the value of combining education with relationship-building. The Next Generation Executives program has successfully launched its first cohort. Participants have learned from experienced industry analysts and business leaders on topics including finance, technology, crisis communication, cybersecurity, real estate, and leadership. While the information being shared is valuable, the relationships forming among the participants may prove equally important.

AICC’s Packaging University offers more than 160 free online courses, available to everyone at a member company. Implemented just last year, learning is even easier to navigate with Colleges of Study. Just find your department or area of interest, and the courses you need are already organized for you. Each college has prerequisite courses to ensure you start on the right foot, covering fundamentals, safety, machines, and packaging terms. The colleges are: • College of Customer Service

• College of Maintenance

• College of Design

• College of Process Improvement

• College of Finance

• College of Production

• College of Human Resources

• College of Sales

• College of Leadership

• College of Warehousing and Logistics

To learn more about Packaging University, scan the QR code in the callout box in this article or visit www.AICCbox.org/packu.

These individuals are building a trusted peer group that can continue supporting one another long after the 18-month program concludes. We are also approximately halfway through the Business Management in Corrugated Packaging program. Participants are expanding their knowledge across critical areas of business management while learning from each other. They will present their capstone projects to a board of industry professionals and graduate in April. AICC’s members possess an extraordinary amount of experience and expertise. Whether members are comparing strategies for managing warp, gaining financial insights from Mitch Klingher and other finance professionals, or discussing board grades and paper with Ralph Young, some of the best education in the industry happens through conversations between people who are willing to share what they know. AICC’s goal is to create intentional opportunities for those conversations to happen.

Expanding Opportunities for Members In the coming year, AICC will continue building educational experiences that bring people together to learn from and grow with one another. This fall, we will host the inaugural Women in Packaging Xperience in Kingsport, Tennessee. The program, sponsored by Domtar, will bring together approximately 25 women from across the industry for several days of education, leadership development, and relationship-building. We are also pleased to announce a 10th CEO Group, which will bring together executives who are navigating similar stages of leadership, ownership, and career decisions. Facilitated by Matt Eichmann, the new group will operate under the existing CEO Group model. Members will have the opportunity to learn from one another, openly discuss challenges, generate ideas, and receive advice from peers who understand the unique responsibilities of leading an independent packaging company.

BOXSCORE www.AICCbox.org

SPECIAL SECTION To learn more these groups and professional development pathways, scan the respective QR code on this page or visit www.AICCbox.org/pathways. Packaging University Continues to Grow Packaging University remains one of the most valued benefits of AICC membership. Thanks to the generous support of the Foundation for Packaging Education, AICC’s Packaging University continues to serve the industry with high-quality educational content. Packaging University provides accessible learning on topics ranging from Workplace Safety Basics and Corrugated Fundamentals to specialized education in sales, production, design, and other functional areas. To date, more than 30,000 courses have been completed through Packaging University. Courses are added and updated each month in both English and Spanish, and we continue to seek opportunities to optimize the overall user experience. To learn more and dive into Packaging University, scan the respective QR code on this page or visit www.AICCbox.org/ packu. Responding to Industry Needs AICC education must continue to respond to what members are asking for. One consistent request has been additional production training. We are pleased to welcome INSCO as an AICC Education Partner and bring its online Advanced Corrugator Program to our members. The training has been reviewed by AICC experts, and members will receive access at the lowest cost available in North America. INSCO will also host a technical program on Corrugator Defects at Corrugated Week. The program is designed for operators, supervisors, plant managers, and maintenance managers who want to better understand how seemingly minor defects can lead to production

54 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

inefficiencies, increased waste, rework, customer complaints, and reduced profitability. The training reinforces the importance of sheet quality as a driver of manufacturing efficiency, product quality, and overall business performance. For other learning opportunities at Corrugated Week, scan the respective QR code on this page or visit www. corrugatedweek.org. AI is another topic members are increasingly interested in understanding. A series of webinars will provide practical guidance on how companies can realistically begin implementing AI to improve efficiency within their businesses. The goal is to help members identify useful starting points, understand potential applications, and become more comfortable with tools that are rapidly becoming part of everyday business. Even the most traditional companies will eventually face the question not whether AI will influence their business, but when and how they will begin adopting it. Check out these upcoming AI-focused webinars via the respective QR code on this page or at www.AICCbox.org/calendar: • October 8, 2–3 p.m. ET: Winning AI Search: How Packaging Manufacturers Get Found, Recommended, and Chosen • December 8, 2–3 p.m. ET: Practical AI for Leadership & Business Productivity Intentional, Accessible, Impactful As we develop new programs and strengthen existing ones, our goal is to be intentional about every educational opportunity we bring to members. That may mean offering hybrid groups that combine in-person and virtual participation, making programs more accessible. It may mean partnering with trusted education providers to offer valuable training at an affordable cost to AICC members. In other cases, it may mean creating something entirely new in-house.

EXPLORE THE OPPORTUNITIES Advisory Groups, Committees, and Emerging Leaders

Packaging University

AI Webinars and Other Upcoming Events

AICC strives to provide members with education that is efficient, affordable, accessible, and impactful. Our industry is built on relationships, but it is also built on a shared thirst for knowledge. AICC brings those strengths together by creating learning environments in which members gain practical information while developing relationships that support them throughout their careers. The future of the independent packaging industry is bright, and associations such as AICC play an important role in protecting and strengthening that future. By creating intentional opportunities to learn, connect, and grow, AICC is helping members prepare for the challenges of today—and the opportunities ahead. Rebecca Rendon is AICC’s director of education and leadership development. She can be reached at rrendon@ AICCbox.org.

SAVE theDATE

April 5 –7

AICC 2027 SPRING MEETING Expert speakers Practical solutions Connections that count

Registration opens mid-December 2026. Visit AICCBox.org to stay informed.

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National Meetings

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Seminars/Webinars

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Hosted twice a year, they offer industryleading programming, speakers, workshops & peer panels, along with networking opportunities and much more!

Dedicated to providing the rising stars of the industry with the information needed to develop and thrive in the paper packaging industry!

A well trained employee is more likely to stay at a company longer and perform better. With 15–20 seminars and webinars each year, we’ve got professional development for all departments.

Define your pain points and AICC will develop a course based on your needs, create course materials, and bring industry trainers directly to your plant!

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With 5–8 regional topical meetings each year, you’ll have the chance to connect with independent converters across the country.

These groups allow participants to confide in peers, share ideas, receive honest feedback & give advice to help businesses grow.

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The Associate Advantage

Start Enabling Outcomes BY MIKE BUTLER

MIKE BUTLER DOMTAR PACKAGING VICE CHAIRMAN MIKE.BUTLER@DOMTAR.COM

JEFF DIETZ KOENIG & BAUER CHAIRMAN JEFFREY.DIETZ@KOENIG-BAUER.COM

BRIAN FOLEY BOBST SECRETARY BRIAN.FOLEY@BOBST.COM

WARREN BIRD JB MACHINERY DIRECTOR WBIRD@JBMACHINERY.COM

JOHN BURGESS PAMARCO IMMEDIATE PAST CHAIRMAN JOHN.BURGESS@PAMARCO.COM

58 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

f you supply anything to this industry, you’ve probably sat through conversations about specs, price per unit, lead times, maybe a mention of what’s “new.” That’s the baseline. It’s also where most suppliers get stuck. The converters you’re calling on don’t wake up thinking about your product. They’re thinking about uptime, waste, labor, customer demands, and how to deliver more value with fewer resources. That’s the opportunity. And it requires a shift: Stop selling products and start enabling outcomes. What Problem Are You Solving? Your value is defined by what you make. It’s defined by what improves for your customer when they use it. Does your containerboard help a converter lightweight without sacrificing performance? Does your equipment reduce downtime or make changeovers faster? Does your ink run cleaner, reduce wash-ups, or improve print consistency? Does your digital solution unlock new types of work or shorten lead times? Those are outcomes. And they’re what converters are willing to pay attention to. When you lead with a measurable improvement, you change the conversation. The Best Suppliers Know the Plant Floor It’s hard to enable outcomes if you don’t understand the environment your product lives in. The best suppliers in this industry know how a corrugator runs and where bottlenecks show up. They understand how decisions made upstream affect performance downstream. When you have that context, your recommendations get sharper. You’re not just suggesting a better product; you’re helping solve a real operational constraint.

Make It Easier, Not Just Better Converters value partners who are responsive, transparent, and straightforward to work with. That means: • Clear communication when something changes. • Realistic lead times, not optimistic ones. • Fast follow-up when there’s an issue. • Technical support that shows up when needed, not after the fact. If you’re hard to work with, someone else will win. In a lot of cases, “easy” beats “slightly better.” Bring Ideas That Matter Converters don’t have time for ideas that don’t translate into results. The bar is simple: If you’re bringing something new, connect it directly to an outcome. Lower cost. Faster throughput. Better print quality. Reduced waste. That’s especially true as the industry navigates pressures such as EPR, labor constraints, and rising customer expectations. The suppliers who stand out are the ones who help converters respond to pressures with practical solutions. Earn the Right Enabling outcomes is about consistency. Deliver when you say you will. Be transparent when things don’t go as planned. Show up when there’s a problem. Over time, that builds trust, earning you the right to bring bigger ideas. That’s when you move from vendor to partner—and partners are the ones who win. Mike Butler is senior director, packaging sales, at Domtar and vice chairman of AICC’s Associate board.

What the Tech?

Your Data Was Never the Problem BY DAVID WIENS

ou’ve been told for a decade that your data is why you can’t do any of this, that the analytics and the automation all wait on a cleanup you’ll never finish. It’s a good excuse, and it just expired. Start with the part nobody says out loud: Your ERP data is fine. You run the whole plant on it, every order, spec, schedule, and invoice, and you bet the business on it every day. The mess was always the stuff around it, the shared drives, the spreadsheets, the one-off exports. And what stopped you was never that mess. It was the price of using it. Using it meant a project. Stand up a data warehouse, hire someone to haul your numbers into their platform, pay them to clean it there, build the

60 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

dashboards, and rent you a chatbot to ask questions of your own data. Six figures and a year, and you owned none of it at the end. We all know how that goes: the kickoff, the discovery phase, the scope creep, the go-live that slips two quarters, and a dashboard nobody opens because the numbers are already stale. That on-ramp is what kept you parked, and “we’ll start our data initiative next year” has been the answer for 10 years running. The On-Ramp Just Collapsed It collapsed from two directions at once. Your ERP vendor is shipping AI that reads its own copy of your business data. Amtech folded Clarico, a machinelearning estimating and quoting engine, into the system, and Advantive switched

on AIVA across its product line, Kiwiplan included, so you can put a plain-English question to your operational data instead of waiting on a report. No project. The quoting and costing brains stay where they belong, inside the system that already knows your board combos and your corrugator schedule. Microsoft is shipping the other half, the fix for the messy data around the edges. The stack most plants already pay for and underuse will pool your scattered files into Fabric, let Copilot shape and check them, answer questions in the same Teams window your team already lives in, and build the Power BI reports. Fabric’s data agents do exactly that, in preview today. That bundle, the warehouse, the cleanup, the dashboards, the chat, is the

Upcoming Events

We’re excited to share the following events happening at AICC:

Winning AI Search: How Packaging Manufacturers Get Found, Recommended, and Chosen October 8, 2026 Webinar | 2:00 PM ET

West Coast Golf Tournament October 13, 2026 Strawberry Farms Golf Club, Irvine, CA

Practical AI for Production, Operations & Training October 14, 2026 Webinar | 2:00 PM ET

Practical AI for Leadership & Business Productivity December 8, 2026 Webinar | 2:00 PM ET

AICC Mexico Annual Meeting & Trade Fair November 10–13, 2026 HS HOTSSON Hotel León, León, Guanajuato, Mexico

Women in Packaging Xperience November 11–12, 2026

Managing Your Workforce in 2027: Key Employment Law Developments January 13, 2027 Webinar | 2:00 PM ET

AICC Ski Meeting February 18–20, 2027 The Peaks Resort & Spa, Telluride, CO

The Corrugated Collective February 23–24, 2027 Niagara Falls Marriott Fallsview, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

AICC Spring Meeting April 5–7, 2027

Trump National Doral Resort, Doral, FL

AICC Fall Meeting September 13–15, 2027

The Westin Copley Place Hotel, Boston, MA

AICC Spring Meeting April 3–5, 2028

The Omni PGA Frisco Resort, Frisco, TX

MeadowView Conference Resort & Convention Center, Kingsport, TN

AICC/TAPPI SuperCorrExpo® October 8–12, 2028 Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, FL

AICCBox.org/Calendar

What the Tech?

entire business those consultants used to sell you, now running on software you own. Connect the two halves, your ERP’s AI on the operational core and Microsoft’s on everything else, and you land where the yearlong warehouse project was supposed to put you, minus the project. What used to cost a year and a consulting retainer now costs a capacity license and a few weeks of someone’s attention. That’s the genuinely new part. You can get there from where you already sit, with the people and budget you already have. Don’t read that as Microsoft doing all of it. It will even sell you a quote agent: Its Business Central Sales Order Agent reads requests out of a shared mailbox and drafts the order today, but only for shops on its generic ERP. A box plant gets nothing from it, because Business Central can’t quote a box. The office half is

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Microsoft’s. The quoting half stays in your system, and it takes both to finish the job. Quoting Back on the Hard Jobs Every piece of an automatic quote already sits in your plant: a portal to take the request, an engine to price it, a scheduler, a trigger that orders paper and tooling. Amtech’s customer portal already prices common reorders off a built-in matrix and books them in one click, no CSR, no email. The front door works. What it couldn’t do was the oddball job, the one that needs a designer and an estimator, because wiring that last stretch used to mean the project. Now it doesn’t. Your customer gets a price while they’re still on your site, and the job hits the schedule before your competitor has called them back. It still isn’t push-button. Nobody’s AI cleans your data while you get coffee, and somebody on your side has to learn the

tools and decide what “correct” looks like before a machine can hold to it. But closing that gap is now an afternoon with a tool you own. It used to be a year and a vendor you rented. The work moved from “fund a project” to “pick it up,” and that’s the whole difference. The shops that move now will be the ones that quit waiting for the data to clean itself or a consultant to come fix it, and start learning the tools already sitting in front of them. The rest will keep saying “next year,” the way they have for 10, while the plant down the road wires its front door to its back office and starts quoting in minutes. David Wiens is CEO of BPS AI Software. He can be reached at david@bpsaisoftware.com

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Strength in Numbers

An Integrated Approach to Reporting BY MITCH KLINGHER

he world is a busy place, and in business the most important tasks generally involve making sure the customer is taken care of, and for most employees of a converting operation, reporting that is the job of the accounting department. Lots of nonfinancial measurements that you collect every day are necessary for running your business and helping you understand your financial statements. The historical problem has always been that the data that you need is not all within the same program, or the same database within a given program. In the past, in order to mine the data properly, even if it was in the same software package, you were at the mercy of the software vendor to create customized reporting. Thanks to advances in cloud

64 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

technology and AI, those days are over, and using programs such Microsoft Power BI, Domo, Tableau, Looker, and others can revolutionize your reporting systems, by mining data from all of the databases where you currently store data and integrating it into reports and dashboards that can help you, your managers, and your key employees better manage your business. Without getting too fancy, let’s talk about some data and statistics that you can and should add to your financial reporting package right now, which will enhance your understanding of what happened during the reporting period: Measures of activity like MSF or tonnage information. Almost everyone has this information, and most of you

utilize it incorrectly. Simply dividing sales and all expenses by MSF shipped can lead you to some very bad conclusions. There are things you need to do to make this data more useful. Best practice here is to apply footage or tonnage manufactured to the manufacturing expenses and footage shipped to the rest of the income statement (sales, selling, shipping, etc.). You need to apply the footage manufactured to only manufactured sales, so if you have nonmanufactured sales (resale, pack out, etc.) you need to show those sales and direct costs separately. The best practice for that is to show contribution from manufactured sales separately from contribution from other categories of sales. Let’s say your company has $25 million in sales, and

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Strength in Numbers

30% of those sales are nonmanufactured, and you shipped 200,000 MSF during the period. If you simply divide total sales by MSF shipped, you will calculate an overall sales price of $125 per MSF. By applying this statistic to the manufactured sales, the calculated number will be $87.50 per MSF ($25,000,000 x 0.7)/200,000). Similarly, labor and other plant costs per MSF will be skewed if you simply use footage shipped for these statistics. This is another reason why looking at everything as a percentage of sales can be deceiving—the sales may be out of sync with the production depending on the month, and the statistics will look artificially high or low. Nonmanufactured sales should have a subschedule showing the material margins on these sales separately from manufactured sales. The profitability or lack thereof is often masked when they are not broken out separately. Major machine hour information expressed in uptime, planned downtime, and unplanned downtime are also essential statistics that allow the reader to evaluate the overall efficiency of the manufacturing operation. What if your operation produced 20,000 MSF in a given month on 2,000 machine hours and only 18,000 MSF on 2,200 hours of machine time in another month? Is that something that should be looked into? Does it cause you to think differently about the efficiency of your operation? In my opinion, major machine hours available and major machine hours actually utilized in production are among the most important and underreported statistics in any converting operation. You are already tracking this information; why not add it to the financial information and begin to calculate margins per productive hour? Why not show it by machine to see where you really have capacity?

66 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

Number of shipping days in the period should be shown for all periods presented. Some months have 18 shipping days, and some have 22, so a month may be exceptionally good simply because of the number of available shipping days. In many cases inventory goes up during these months, particularly if inclement weather or other natural disasters impair shipping during a particular period. Some sort of shrinkage or sheet loss statistic should be included with your schedule of materials consumed along with information about the basis weight of the purchases as well as the percentage of white and other premium board acquired. This will help evaluate the acquisition cost of materials. Sample shrinkage calculation: Purchased

50,000

Opening inventory

5,000

Ending inventory

-7,000

Available to be shipped

48,000

Shipped

-45,000

Shrinkage

3,000

Shrinkage % (3,000/48,000)

6.25%

(All data is per in tons or in MSF)

Information about paid labor for the period should be included in the form of direct labor hours paid versus footage produced. This should exclude vacation pay, sick pay, and any other pay that is not for hours actually worked during the period. MSF produced per direct labor hour paid is one of the better measurements of productivity in the absence of a major change in mix. Delivery expenses should include miles driven and trips made so that an average cost per mile and an average cost per trip can be calculated. Some measure of cube utilization is also important to be able to evaluate the

efficiency of the operation. Some of the more advanced operations have had their driver logs scanned and put into database format. Once this is done, AI can be utilized to improve route efficiencies as well as to calculate time-per-stop information. The time devoted to each delivery can be tracked, and cost per delivery hour can be calculated for each customer. It can be illuminating to find out that some of your shorter shipments in terms of distance tie up the drivers longer than do some of the accounts with longer shipping distances. Selling expenses should really be about the “sales department” and contain all of the expenses of your salespeople so that you can really see the cost of your salespeople as a percentage of sales. To add better analytics to this, you should show “house account” and other noncommissioned sales to better evaluate the cost of your sales effort. Since you are probably tracking new customers, new items, and the percentage of quotes that actually become orders, you can add that information as well. In this new age of cloud-based data and artificial intelligence, lots of new relationships can be developed marrying financial and nonfinancial data that can help you do a better job of keeping your finger on the pulse of your business and better understanding the results of your operations. The cost of this has now come down significantly, and you are no longer completely at the mercy of what your software vendors want to give you. The time has come to embrace this technology and improve all of your reporting systems. Mitch Klingher is owner of Klingher Nadler LLP. He can be reached at 201-731-3025 or mitch@ klinghernadler.com.

Planning for the future is one of your most important jobs. Selling your business, succession planning, equipment decisions and expansions require the best advice and strategy. We’ve been providing Business Planning Services to the independent converter for over 30 years. Need to make a big decision? Call us now.

STILL the Industry Experts 580 Sylvan Avenue, Suite M-A Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632 (201) 731-3025 • Fax: (201) 731-3026 info@klinghernadler.com

Foundation for Packaging Education

An Investment in the Future of Independent Packaging

y the time you read these words, team members from AICC member companies will have completed more than 30,000 courses through Packaging University—a milestone worth celebrating and, more importantly, sustaining. When Packaging University launched in the spring of 2017, AICC made a bold commitment: to provide every employee of every dues-paying member company access to meaningful, industry-specific education. Since then, Packaging University has become one of AICC’s most valuable member benefits. The return on investment has been clear. Member companies have reduced training and onboarding costs while strengthening the capabilities of their people. Employees have gained a broader understanding of the corrugated and packaging business, sharpened their skills, and increased the value they bring to their organizations every day. Today, Packaging University includes more than 150 courses across nine colleges, with approximately 40 courses available in

68 BOXSCORE September/October 2026

Spanish. It continues to evolve to meet the changing needs of our industry—updating content, developing new coursework, and expanding access to ensure that learning remains relevant and practical. But excellence in workforce education does not sustain itself. Keeping Packaging University current and impactful requires significant investment, both human and financial. AICC’s general funds support this work, but they do not cover it entirely. That is where the Foundation for Packaging Education becomes essential. Foundation donors make Packaging University sustainable. They help ensure that our industry has a stronger, more knowledgeable workforce—one prepared to lead, innovate, and grow. More than 500 companies belong to AICC. Yet today, only 49 are foundation donors. AICC members have always been generous with their time, sponsorships, expertise, and ideas. Supporting the Foundation for Packaging Education is

another meaningful way to strengthen the future of independent packaging. If Packaging University has benefited your company, or if you believe in investing in the next generation of industry talent, please consider becoming a Foundation for Packaging Education donor. It is an investment not only in your team, but in the future of the independent converter. Scan the QR code on this page or visit www.packaginged.org to learn more and contribute.

LEARN MORE AND DONATE

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PACKAGING

CORRUGATED

F O U N D AT I O N

Limited Spots Available for ICPF’s Holiday Weekend in Washington, D.C.!

he International Corrugated Packaging Foundation (ICPF) has a limited number of spots still available for our 2026 Holiday Weekend in Washington, D.C. We are excited to return to our nation’s capital for America’s 250th year and invite you to join us on December 11–13. Support ICPF’s educational programs and initiatives while enjoying the holiday season in Washington! The event will begin with a Friday evening reception sponsored by Pratt Industries at the historic Warner Theatre, immediately followed by an evening performance of the holiday classic The Nutcracker. On Saturday, ICPF has made plans for guests to attend a cocktail reception sponsored by Fosber America and a seated dinner sponsored by Bobst at an exclusive private club located just minutes from the White House and the event hotel. Scan the respective QR code on this page to register for the event. The Willard InterContinental® Washington, D.C. ICPF is excited to be working with a new hotel partner, the Willard InterContinental® Washington, D.C., on Pennsylvania Avenue just steps away from the White House. Experience timeless elegance in the heart of the nation’s capital. From beautifully restored guest rooms to iconic specialty suites, the Willard offers accommodations that honor its presidential past while embracing modern luxury. An iconic destination often referred to as the “Residence of Presidents,” the Willard has welcomed U.S. presidents, foreign dignitaries, and celebrities and has been the site of many historic moments in U.S. history for over

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200 years. ICPF has reserved deluxe king rooms ($399), junior suites ($499), and one-bedroom suites ($799) for the event. Hotel reservations are the responsibility of attendees. Scan the respective QR code on this page to reserve your room. Choose “Book Your Stay” and enter your arrival and departure dates. Under the “Rate Preference” dropdown, click “Group Rate” and enter the group code “ICP” before hitting search. The cutoff date to make reservations is November 19. Reach out to ICPF President Caitlin Salaverria at 847-226-2671 or csalaverria@ icpfbox.org for more information. As always, ICPF appreciates your support of our educational programs, current initiatives, and outreach. We hope you are able to join us in Washington, D.C., for this memorable event. Caitlin Salaverria is president of ICPF.

REGISTER AND BOOK YOUR STAY TODAY! Scan the codes to register for ICPF’s Holiday Weekend in Washington, D.C., and to reserve your room at The Willard InterContinental® Washington, D.C.

Reserve Your Room

TECHNICAL QUESTIONS? Ask AICC’s experts your corrugated, folding House carton, Ad #3 rigid box, and risk management questions.

Find you answers at

AICCbox.org/Experts.

The Final Score

The Measure of a Leader

n the mid-1990s, I had the great privilege of attending a three-day leadership seminar led by Professor John Kotter at Harvard Business School. Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, and a globally recognized authority on organizational change. Matsushita was a Japanese industrialist and founder of Panasonic. As Terri-Lynn Levesque’s year as AICC chairwoman ends, I’m proud of the emphasis AICC has placed on leadership through her theme, Legacy in Action, Inspiring Tomorrow’s Leaders. These transitions are always a moment of reflection for me, and they often lead me back to my own leadership journey. Kotter closed the seminar by sharing the following thought from Matsushita: “Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind, it is not a matter of red lips, and supple knees; it is a matter of will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. “Youth means the temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 over a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. “Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. “In the center of your heart there is a wireless station, so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage, and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young. When the aerials are down and your spirit is covered with the snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20. But as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.” It was a powerful way to close an exceptional course, and I have returned to it often since. Over the years, I’ve come to see leadership through this lens. The most effective leaders are rarely defined by age or title, but by energy, courage, and a resistance to cynicism. Organizations thrive when leaders stay curious, embrace possibility, and remain committed to ideals larger than themselves. But the quote also grounds us in the here and now. Leadership requires composure, authenticity, and limits. Constant optimism without judgment can slip into naïveté. The lesson for me is, yes, leaders must be optimistic, but not endlessly. Leadership demands realism, but more importantly, it demands that we never surrender our sense of possibility.

Michael D’Angelo AICC President

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Corrugated Week 2026

Booth 805

The Cheapest Kilowatt Is The One You Never Use. AutoDryer Control™ delivers only the energy your job requires, automatically, intelligently, safely, and without operator intervention.

Field Proven Performance! CASE STUDY 1

344kW SAVED/hr

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383kW

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COLOR 5-colors on semi-coated, full coverage, all dryers active

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CASE STUDY 3

336kW

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Week 2026

Booth 523