printing packaging on newspaper presses! Nathan Alford / LM Tribune

https://revolveprintandpack.com/

https://lmtribune.com/

Totally recycled and recyclable paper to be used for packaging! 
Over 1 million pounds of material recycled in 2022! 
Soy Ink and energy efficient and low water usage WOW!!! 

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This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest, my friend Nathan Alford from the Great Northwest, doing some incredible things with basically an old technology, turning it into a new technology for packaging, which I'm totally excited about. But Nathan, can you explain it to us? Tell us about your background, who you are, all that.

Nathan Alford: 0:52

You bet. Well, not, not far down the road from you, Corey, in the Portland area. Yeah, we are in Lewis and Idaho. So up in the skinny part, the panhandle part up in the northern part. So just south of Pullman, Washington, Moscow, Idaho, Lewiston Valley, Lewis and Clarkson Valley. Yeah, we are our roots are run super deep. Our small company was started by, actually by a great-grandfather and a great-great uncle who pulled up steaks from Texas. And then they ended up coming on horseback and buying a Washington hand press literally in Portland, not far from you. Wow. Took a Washington hand, press up the river to Lewiston, Idaho, offloaded it, and started then a daily newspaper called the Lewiston Tri. Huh. And the Lewis in Tribune, I bet the brothers big mustaches and a penant for whiskey and cigars. They would never have imagined that I'd be hanging with you. Corey talking now 130 years later. So they were, I'm now the fourth generation editor, publisher as part of the family. We're an employee owned company that's kind of keeping their Duke. We have a good attitude about the journalism industry and so excited to talk to you about our packaging startup, adventurous new effort that we have effectively re-engineered, kind of an eco forward re-engineering of this really cool printing press new technology, the newest press in the United States. This side of the Mississippi River is sitting in downtown Lewiston. And and happy to answer any and all questions, but we basically turned the conventional functionality of a printing press, right? That folds and cuts and makes broad sheets and tabs and flexes and magazines, all those things into a roll to roll packaging style solution. So cool. Sometimes you have to squint a little bit to understand where we're living and what we're doing, but I guess that's why we're hanging. Exactly.

Cory Connors: 2:36

It's when you told me the story, I thought, oh, I can't wait to tell everyone about this because it's so innovative and it's such an interesting way to look at. Print you know, the newspaper trend is certainly less. And this is an opportunity to take that kind of equipment and turn it into something that's very needed and frankly, very popular in the world of packaging, which is printed paper

Nathan Alford: 3:06

void film, right? Yep. That it's a double-headed canvas. Cool, cool idea.

Cory Connors: 3:12

I love it. Yeah., can you explain to us kind of the process? You mentioned you get recycled material and it's a hundred percent post-consumer material, and then you convert that, and then you print it on site.

Nathan Alford: 3:27

We do, yeah. We just effectively kind of opened the, you know, the proverbial door in November. And we have a really cool neighbor of ours who is a really a progressive, cool company in Moscow, Idaho, called Northwest River Supply. Mm-hmm. They're one of the nations of globe leaders on globe of manufacturing. These really nice high quality aluminum frame whitewater boats float boats. So they're kind of been our pioneer partner. So maybe using them as an example Package all sorts of outdoor gear including their, their frames, all the way down to straps and different things that you and I would want on the river. And then what they do is outta their e-commerce shop. They package it up and, and wrap it with product printed here in Lewiston. And they, they basically take their design, their messaging, and they can share it in full color. They can connect with their customers, kind of deepen their connection with their customers, share and values. So when their customers, whether it's direct to businesses or to consumers, when they have that unboxing experience, they open that up and have the opportunity to to not just have the blank craft or. Perhaps even worse, a single use plastic, the air pillows or the bubble wrap. But instead have that branded paper. And they're telling cool stories on it and using it for really unique things. So it ma it makes a lot of sense for we're already paying Corey, you and I, if we send a package to a friend, we're paying for it already, right? We might as well include in that package for not any more money, frankly a message, right? So we can share QR codes and, and tell a story. Cory Connors: Excellent point., I just talked to somebody about advertising on packaging. and how we all think it's the future of advertising it. Mm-hmm. People aren't watching cable TV as much. They're, they're watching YouTube and they're watching other sources or Netflix, which doesn't have a lot of advertisement. So you think about what's the, what's the one thing you can guarantee somebody's gonna look at? And it's the box that they open. It's the void fill that's inside the box and it's packaging. So that's absolutely kudos to you and, and what you're doing. I mean, how cool would it be? You know, like another northwest company like r ei, if you get a gift or you get your package in the mail, we all get excited. Right. You're ripping into something. You pick if there was a cool you know, hiking map of the, of you know, of, of Mount Baker that you, that might even be enough to pin up on the, near the cake fridge in the garage or something like that. That's right. A neat, neat way to tell. To connect.

Cory Connors: 5:57

Absolutely. Exactly right. And I think it's, not only is it sustainable, but it's a way to improve your, your retention of your customer. I think a loyalty program, people are interested, they're gonna open it up and they're gonna show it on Instagram and, and TikTok and say, Hey, check this out. You know, I got this from this really cool company and it's printed and it looks beautiful and this you, you know, this is just the packing. Also check out the item too. That's that's awesome as well.

Nathan Alford: 6:28

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. It really is fun. And you know, we're, we don't pretend to be experts. You know, we've, I've kind of been working on this Corey for a couple years, you know, as we try to reinvent the economics that support independent newspapers like ours. You know, we're kind of the giant breed, so to speak. I think there's 86 or so of us by count left in the United States. So as we reinvent that model We hope that something like this not only can help make our our Northwest better, you know, I love the idea of regionality and working with the cos down the road. You know, not too far, not too many semi-truck tanks of gas away . But we can we can share these cool recycled paper products and you know, just makes, there's some pragmatism there. It makes. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 7:10

And com companies can feel good about reusing or using recycled material. Mm-hmm. and low carbon footprint in comparison to something maybe that's I imported, or something that's plastic based. I think this is a wave of the future that I'm excited to

Nathan Alford: 7:26

see. Yeah, we can lessen the impact. That's a positive.

Cory Connors: 7:30

Right. Yeah. Right. And, and keep those fibers in the northwest, you know, they're recyclable. You know, I've heard seven times, but I think that mm-hmm., the real answer is closer to 10 or 12. It's an amazing

Nathan Alford: 7:45

step. So on, on the reclaimed fiber side again, you know, our newspaper's super old, that's a long arc of time, 130 years. But my grandpa who kicked the bucket before I was born mm-hmm., I think he was on the wall back there. But he started a relation, you know, it's all about good people. He started a relationship with a Spokane Washington base company called Inland Empire Paper. Mm-hmm., and you wanna talk about good people there. Anyways, a longtime friend Glenn Owens, who's our lead relationship guy there, they have one of the nations leading environmentally conscious mills including up in the Canada and all over the United States. And we've been buying paper from those guys since before World War ii. Kind of back to the grandpa days. So we're, it's cool, we're, we're just a stones throw, you know, less than a hundred miles away. So we literally, on Saturday morning, every Saturday morning we have this truck that we run up, a 54 foot semi. We run up and dump all of that prior weeks newspaper that was either on pull-up copies or ones our customers left, but a full semi load of reclaimed fiber. We go up, drop it off, and then we pick up a trailer full of that next week's supply. We we're literally closed loop within a hundred miles, so it's pretty fun to not burn the fuel and to reclaim those fibers all the time. We didn't know it at the time, but before it was a thing, we'd been doing it and I went back and made sure I had our mouth right. But since 1991, we've been running that same Saturday semi-truck up there this year, which is just kind of a geek sta. But we've already, and this was at the end of November, delivered more than a million pounds of reclaimed fiber to our mills, so I can go back into the slurry and be repurposed to come back to us on a following Saturday delivery. 1

Cory Connors: 9:24

million pounds

Nathan Alford: 9:25

just this year. Yeah. And we're north of that now that we're, that was a few weeks ago. But yeah, so it's legit. You know, we do all the printing for W Ssu and Vie on the newspaper side for student newspapers. We, there's a bunch of work we do that really helps sustain us. So there's a bunch of trimmings when we make magazines every little bit, we swoop off the floor and take back up for our friends at Inland Empire in Millwood, Washington.

Cory Connors: 9:49

that's incredible. So, I mean, we're talking. Millions of pounds, like what do you think? From 91 to

Nathan Alford: 9:56

2022. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, that's the truth. Yeah. So it's kind of fun, you know, we should be celebrating, pointing that out, you know, and I'm not sure we even quite recognized that, certainly when we started in the early nineties, but even before we started looking at how we wanna position our small company for the next generation. It's like, well, hold on. We've actually got a pretty cool narrative here that we think folks would appreciate being a. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 10:22

Yeah, I agree. It's a really cool story. And the carbon footprint of something Dr. Drops dramatically when you know it's going to be recycled. Mm-hmm. I've done, we've done the lifecycle analysis on a lot of different kinds of packaging materials and when, when we know it's going to actually get recycled, the the scores improved dramatically. So this is really cool to see. And when it comes from recycled materials, recycled sources, So somebody out there looking for , a niche product that is very green, environmentally friendly make sure you reach out to Nathan. Anything else that you wanted to, to talk about? Anything else I didn't ask you about?

Nathan Alford: 11:01

You know, I'm trying to think. I kind of get excited and it's easy for me to wave my arms, but we dug into all the chemistry of it. The chemistry of our plates is super cool. We pursued a certification through Kodak Sonora program, so all of our recyclable plates are recycled and the processing, which it wasn't the case a handful of years ago, is all chemical free now. So when we process a plate from Corey to promote his new sneaker line and drop some vo fella in those boxes, or in the, in the final box that is done with Kodak Sonora plates, which is notable, and then the chem free properties of our soy ink. So basically, you know, I have fun on grade school tours. I'm like, if you wanna. Snack, you can basically eat that paper. You know, , there's nothing in there. And we've invested in closed loop, new water technologies, closed loop water technologies. So we use very little water. And we're, our press it's a block wide, it's a 48 page broad sheet press made in plow in Germany that we had shipped over, no eight. But it is super efficient on the power side, it runs on ac rather new, old school DC So we turn it on, turn it off without chewing up much power off the grid, but, We like that idea of it. You know, we don't pretend that we're not gonna solve, you know, global warming. We're not gonna solve all of our ozone issues. But man, in my heart of hearts, and we all love where we live, right in the northwest, yeah. If we can find folks and connect and build partnerships that make sense, I think we can make a difference. You know, we can't lessen that impact. Right. You know, a lot of people claim this and claim that. I think it's just a practical aspect of just making progress together and finding solutions that just chew up less resource. Yeah. And

Cory Connors: 12:42

you're doing your part and the people that are buying from you are doing their part. And I think this is half the battle is, is just, is making positive changes where we can. Mm. So well done. I'm

Nathan Alford: 12:54

excited. Yeah. Well, I can't wait to be, you know, connected to you. And like I said at the beginning, man, we have a lot to learn and, but we've been putting income paper for a long time, so it's fun. You know, some of my newspaper buddies at the conference will have a drink and they'll say, what are you doing again? You know, , what is that? You know, we're, it's it's yet to be a single or a double or a home run. But we hope to humbly and modestly grow some partnerships and, and it's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 13:23

Well, it's my honor to be a part of the solution alongside you and to, to spread the word about what you're doing. So thank you. Yeah. And I'd love to come out and see the press someday and. At your facility, that would be really fun. Oh, man. We would,

Nathan Alford: 13:37

we would love it. We've got above average coffee here in the plant, you know, . So it used to be below average, but it's above average. So I'll pour you a cup.

Cory Connors: 13:44

That's important for employee retention these days. above, above average coffee . Yeah, well said. Well, thank you again. Thank you Landsberg Orora for sponsoring this podcast. If you're listening, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the next episode, and stay tuned for more. Thank you. Cheers.