Leaders of Change Case Studies

Sectors:
Everything from medical to hospitality to horticultural

Speciality:
Pulp Moulded packaging

Solution:
High performance products to replace plastics

Until then, since 2003 Heyting had been running Wolfpack Packaging Inc., a reseller of corrugated boxes and shipping packaging. “We’d always been interested in quality, speed, customer service and being really customer-focused,” he explains from his office in Toronto. “And that’s what began our sustainability journey in the sense that we knew our customers were always looking for better alternatives than what the marketplace offered. We understood their struggles and we understood that it was hard to find cost-effective, efficient, performance-based products to replace plastics.”

Pulp Moulded Products Inc. now manufactures 50 different sustainable packaging solutions for a variety of industries—everything from medical to hospitality to horticultural. The packaging is made using 100 per cent post-industrial paper waste, which is mixed with water to create a paste, then formed and dried. The result is 100 per cent recyclable packaging meant to replace Styrofoam, plastic or pulp packaging.

With a manufacturing plant in Boston, Toronto and a new facility in the works in Reno, as well as packaging carried at retailers across North America, there’s a strong chance you may have come across Pulp Moulded Products Inc. packaging in the grocery store produce aisle, when opening an electronics package or wine delivery.

(Wineries use Pulp Moulded’s packaging for bottles, hence the company’s strong presence in Napa Valley.) If you’re a product manufacturer seeking green alternatives, the good news is sustainable packaging doesn’t have to cost more than traditional options. Heyting explains: “As technology changes, and as we innovate in our industry, we’re able to offer a better product for less money than before…So we’re often offering not just a safe, sustainable solution, but a cost-effective one too.”

Along with creating packaging for a myriad of industries that include automotive and consumer goods, Pulp Moulded Manufacturing is considering making its first foray into cosmetics packaging. The company is investing in new technologies that will allow them to use recycled content to create makeup packaging, which traditionally uses plastic Vacuform packaging parts.

When considering Pulp Moulded Products Inc.’ various offerings, Heyting is particularly proud of the 2S Tray, designed to replace Styrofoam. “The 2S Tray is a homegrown application that we put together from scratch. We did all the research and development around it and all the waterproofing. We were the first ones to do it in our type of molded fiber,” he says. The CEO sees a future where packaging takes on even more importance, driving purchasing decisions as much as packaging appearance and marketing messages. “I think that will be the ‘Wow’ factor for people. Sustainability will be the number one attractiveness in terms of packaging. Instead of [them saying] “Oh, look at that shiny box,” it’ll be more like, “Oh, look at that brown box.”