In the protein industry, packaging isn’t just something that holds the product when it comes off the end of a line. It’s a key part of the operation itself.
Every day, protein processors move enormous volumes of chicken, beef, and pork through facilities on schedules that cannot pause. When those animals arrive at a facility, the operation has to keep moving — you can't send them back to the farm.
That means packaging has to be there, perform as expected, and work with the equipment and processes surrounding it.
In this environment, packaging performance becomes business performance. And understanding why that's true — really understanding it — should change how you think about every packaging decision you make.
The misconception: Protein packaging looks simple
At first glance, protein packaging seems pretty straightforward. High volumes, a small number of box designs, repeatable production. Compared to other industries, it can look like a business built on efficiency and repetition.
That’s true — until something changes. And in protein, something always changes.
Product sizes vary. Seasons affect volume. Equipment breaks down. Supply chains get stressed. The packaging has to work within all of that — not just on any old Tuesday, but on the worst Tuesday of the year.
ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½'ve seen packaging vendors enter this market and win a bid only to discover that the service model is infinitely more demanding than they expected. They looked at the box and thought they understood the business. They didn't.
The companies that have been in this segment the longest have figured something essential out. They stopped evaluating their packaging supplier on the product and started evaluating them on the system built around it.
Those are two very different conversations — and the second is the one that really matters for production that cannot stop.
What protein operations actually need
So what does the system surrounding the box have to do?
Let’s start with the most basic requirement: the packaging has to be there. Not most of the time, but every time.
For a protein processor, an interruption in supply can become an operational crisis real quick. That changes the traditional way we evaluate packaging. Yes, price matters, and quality, too — but reliability comes first. Because without reliability, nothing else works.
Real reliability doesn't come from one product attribute. It comes from a manufacturing network with enough flexibility to reroute supply when a facility has a disruption.
One with coating capabilities distributed across the network so production can shift without the customer ever feeling it.
And with common packaging programs that allow supply to move between facilities when it needs to. A supplier's inherent inconsistencies should never become your crisis.
Then there's the environment itself. Protein plants are cold, wet, and humid. That's hard on corrugated packaging. Materials that perform well in a dry warehouse may start to break down the moment they hit a processing floor. The right liner and coating combination improves durability without adding unnecessary material or cost.
Get it wrong and you're dealing with recurring performance issues that ripple through the entire operation.
Performance support has to extend inside the plant, too. When packaging equipment isn't running properly, production slows whether the box is at fault or not. Having specialists who can walk into a customer's facility, work directly with the maintenance team, and fix the problem on the spot — rather than waiting days for an outside service call — keeps the line moving and keeps that cost off the customer's books.
That's the kind of service that doesn't show up in a bid comparison, but it shows up every single time something goes wrong.
What deep industry experience adds
After enough time in this segment, experience stops being just a credential. It becomes a real differentiator. One thing we've learned over a combined 60-plus years in this industry is that experience doesn't just help you solve problems — it helps you see them before they happen.
After working with protein processors for that long, you start to recognize patterns. You know how a customer's production schedule shifts heading into the holidays. You understand the difference between how a poultry facility operates and how a beef or pork plant does. You know which changes are likely to improve performance and which ones will create new problems downstream.
Ed's mom gave him a piece of advice early in his career that's stayed with both of us. She said: understand your business, but understand your customer's business even better. That's always been the standard we hold ourselves to. Because when you truly understand the operation, you spend less time reacting and more time preventing.
And that knowledge is carried by real people — account managers and specialists who have spent years, sometimes entire careers, inside this segment.
They know their customers by name, know their facilities, and bring a depth of relationship that a generalist team simply can't replicate. The customer isn't just accessing an individual salesperson, they're accessing the accumulated knowledge of a team that has spent decades focused on this industry alone.
That depth of understanding is also what makes genuine innovation possible. The evolution of poultry packaging over the past few decades is a good example.
The traditional box design was bulky, heavy, and hard to handle. ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ developed a new format with a smaller footprint that could hold the same capacity and was significantly easier to manage ergonomically.
But changing the geometry of the box created an additional benefit: by distributing weight across more corners, the package could achieve the required performance using lighter-weight material. Better ergonomics, better material efficiency, lower cost — all from understanding the operation well enough to rethink the box from the inside out. That design approach has since become widespread across the poultry industry.
The principle for us has always been the same: understand the operation well enough to improve it, not just supply it.
What a company looks like when it’s built around these requirements
At ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½, everything we've described is the philosophy for how we’ve built our protein business.
ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½'ve invested in materials and manufacturing processes designed specifically for demanding processing environments. ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½'ve built redundancy into our network so customers aren't dependent on a single facility. ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½'ve developed technical teams that work alongside customers on the plant floor — not just to respond when something breaks, but to keep things running before they do.
ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½'ve also built a team of National Account Managers who work exclusively in protein — many of whom have spent their entire careers in this segment. They bring a depth of relationship and institutional knowledge that goes far beyond what a generalist account team can offer.
And we've built a design center at the heart of the segment where teams collaborate across accounts and share innovation in real time, so what's learned in one facility creates value across many.
All of that represents a single shared belief: That a great box is just the starting point. What keeps the line running is everything built around it.
That same philosophy shapes how we invest. ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ newest protein facility in Waterloo, Iowa expands capacity and strengthens supply reliability — because supporting protein operations means continuously investing in the systems customers depend on, year over year.
The five questions protein processors should ask
Any supplier can manufacture a good box. What’s harder is building the people, systems, and expertise that help customers keep production moving, always.
The companies that thrive in this segment have learned to evaluate packaging partners not just on the product, but on the system. So when you're sitting across from your next supplier, here are the questions that will tell you what you actually need to know:
- How will you protect my supply if one manufacturing facility has a disruption?
- What happens if specialized coating capacity goes offline?
- How do you help customers prevent packaging issues before they affect production?
- Who supports my plant when packaging equipment isn't performing properly?
- How much experience do the people on my account actually have in protein?
In the protein industry, a quality box is merely the price of entry. The system and the people behind it are what separates a vendor from a partner.
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