ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608090019
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: DAVID FRANECKI RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
Hulking presses roar thunderously, spewing out reams of razor-thin paperboard freshly inked with the names and logos of America's consumer product bluebloods: McDonald's, Philip Morris, Proctor & Gamble.
An intricate network of rollers hurtles the board on a blurring ride, from mammoth rolls to color presses to rhythmic machinery that precisely kinks, folds and slices it to its proper forms.
From the chaos emerges packages - tons of them, more than a billion a year if you took time to count.
The boxes will hold french fries, cigarettes, soaps, chewing gum - anything consumed in mass quantities - and be casually discarded when empty.
But there's a lot that goes into those little fry cartons and McNugget boxes.
Just ask the folks who run the thriving packaging plant that was acquired five months ago by the $350 million-a-year Graphic Packaging Corp. They describe a supremely technical, capital-intensive process that churns out increasingly sophisticated packages.
Consumer preferences in packaging have amazed even the men who have run the Richmond plant since they helped start it in 1985.
``Who would have thought ... we'd see Michael Jordan doing a jumpshot on a fry carton?'' said John S. Waring III, Graphic Packaging's general manager of operations.
Fifteen years ago, American industry thought consumers didn't want flashy packaging, said R. Wayne Mullican, Graphic Packaging's vice president of sales and marketing. But with the advent of generics and changing consumer tastes, effective packaging can add value to a product.
``Packaging is a driving influence in the supermarket,'' he said.
But the real work goes into perfecting what's lining the inside of the package.
A package-maker's world can be a thankless one, the two executives explained. Often, it's only the mistakes that get noticed, they said, and consumers aren't aware of what goes into the boxes that they are so quick to discard.
For instance, who thinks about the chemicals in the cardboard that prevent grease from soaking through a McNugget carton and soiling your jeans or car seat? Who notices the coating on the inside of a Cascade box that locks out moisture to prevent soap grains from caking?
But let a cigarette pack open improperly and ruin the contents, and a smoker will have plenty to say about the packaging, none of it laudatory.
Half of the local plant's business involves tobacco products, down from 100 percent when it was founded. Food and confections account for about one-third, and soaps and other product make up the rest.
Many of the packages are smartly designed and brightly colored by rotogravure. But Graphic Packaging officials say they aren't artists. They prize speed, precision and uniformity, taking delight in making the color on the first box printed in an order of 25 million precisely match the last one off the presses.
The plant doesn't do the design work for its packages, but takes artwork submitted by clients and makes computer drawings that ensure the designs fit perfectly and packages are correctly sized.
It was the high-tech nature of the process that led to Graphic Packaging, which is based in Wayne, Pa., to buy the local plant from Gravure Packaging Inc., for $33 million.
The plant's work force, slightly more than 200 people, was not altered by the acquisition. Waring and Mullican, Gravure Packaging's president and chairman, respectively, were appointed to their posts within Graphic Packaging after the sale.
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CLEMENT BRITT/Richmond Times-Dispatch. Eugene Rustin isby CNBone of about 200 workers employed by Graphic Packaging Corp. color.