Vobev making cans on site and filling / General Manager Eric Cudnohoske

https://vobev.com/
What if you could make your cans on site and fill them and distribute them all from the same location? 
How did they almost eliminate freight costs for setup? 
1,200,000 square feet of production and office capacity! 
sales@vobev.com 

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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: 0:34

Welcome to sustainable packaging with Cory Connors . I'm very excited about this very innovative company that I get to interview today. My friend, Mr. Eric, Cudnohoske who is the general manager of Bo Bev. Welcome, sir.

Eric Cudnohoske: 0:48

Okay, great to be here. Really appreciate the time. Corey love to love three talking aluminum of the talking about the new business. Thank you so much.

Cory Connors: 0:56

We're incredibly excited about sustainable packaging and what you guys are doing in my opinion is a very sustainable way of doing things. I can't wait to dive into it with the audience here, but I want to start with a little bit of your background. Can you tell us. A little bit of your history and how you ended up as general

Eric Cudnohoske: 1:15

manager. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Th the condensed version is so I'm a chemist by trade. Spent some time in the chemical industry. No offense to the chemical industry, but for me you know, the chemical industry is very cut and dry. I'm a, I'm an outside the box kind of guy. And you know, I learned that early on and went into manufacturing and have been in manufacturing for over 20 years. And you know, I had had a lot of opportunity. Little, little mom and pop place, 120,000 square feet where the CEO and the sweeper were all in the same place. And then multi-billion dollar global companies and got to see that side of the business and you know, through, through all of it, it was just, it was a really, it was a great experience where I got to see things from many different aspects. I got to see. The the business aspect, I've got to see the people aspect you know, all these different things. I also got to see aspects in, in different countries. Which is, you know, a great experience when, when you can go and see what manufacturing looks like in Italy or Thailand or Brazil you know, it was just, it was an awesome opportunity to get me really to where I am today, through all that. I had opportunities to work with supply chain business units with with safety, with people, with training. And all of that kinda, kinda got me to where I was a year ago when I had the opportunity to come to Vobev . And really stand up accompany. This is truly a startup. You know, there, there was a farm field where, where Vobev stands today. And you know, it, it, it was a really neat process. It continues to be, we continue to, to do that kind of revolution process and and, and get us to where we are today, which, which is, I was actually talking to somebody this morning about it. You know about a year ago is when I was contacted. And it's, it's incredible to look at what's happened in a year. You know, I feel privileged. This is absolutely as, as many have spoken a once in a lifetime opportunity where you get a chance to make a difference in, in a really, really genuine way.

Cory Connors: 3:30

I absolutely agree having the opportunity to see other manufacturing facilities and other way people package things has been one of my favorite parts of my career. And I agree with you. We need to learn from each other. We need to support each other. You guys are doing something totally new. Totally unique, never been done before, as far as I know where you've brought canning in-house and literally production of cans in house. So can, can you kind of walk us through. How does, how does that work?

Eric Cudnohoske: 4:06

Yeah, that's a great question because it's, you know, it, it, it is innovative. I can say that. So, so Boba is, is new to north America. There are, there are some folks around the world that are, that are kind of doing what we're doing. I, I would say probably not on exactly the same scale, but, but the thoughts are out there. And I think, I think it's a great thing. You know, Bobo, it's been around since about 2019 and has been ticked around in many different forms. We looked at it all sorts of different types of packaging and and, and how to do things. You know, it wasn't, we didn't really know where we wanted to go. We eventually channeled him to the beverage side. And once you're in the beverage side, it was the question of, well, do we want to do aluminum or do we want to do plastic? Or would you want to do paper Petra? You know, whatever. Right. And what it came down to was really was really the recyclability. How, how do we, how do we make a difference? You know, we could, we could do plastic. We could do Tetra, we could do all these other things, but then there's the aluminum. But the thing with the aluminum side is it's scary because I mean, there's, there's a lot of big players. There's a lot of people that are really good at making aluminum cans today. So that's where we kind of started to think about, well, okay. If we wanted to make an aluminum can, what else could we do? And then we, we kind of dove into the whole supply chain. And what the supply chain is today from a, for aluminum cans from making them in one side of, in one place and then taking them to another place to get filled and then another place to get packaged and another place to get distributed. And we started to say, okay, if we have this, this aluminum, can this, this sustainable piece, what about the. Took out some of the supply chain and made it even more sustainable, made that carbon footprint, even smaller you know, all these different things. And, and that's kind of where the, the Genesis of what Vobev is today came from. It wasn't it wasn't an overnight sensation. It took, it took some time. And it took some time to figure out how we wanted to approach this where we wanted to be salt lake city. And, and. And then it kind of, then it was starting to put the rubber on the road and starting to make things happen.

Cory Connors: 6:18

Why why did they choose Utah

Eric Cudnohoske: 6:20

salt lake city? So there was a lot of, there was a lot of different cities actually that were, that were looked at. One of the reasons for, for Utah was the people you know, Vobev . We definitely value the people. People are going to have a voice within Vobev . They're going to be empowered for us manufacturing. This is this is a pretty intense manufacturing process, making a change, filling a can, pretty intense. So we needed that, that bandwidth with the people, right. We needed people. That really we're looking for, for that job that were educated, that weren't afraid to work. And, and, and that was so excited that was Utah very, very you know, they're very dialed in to their education to, to actually going on and working hard. They're not afraid to work hard. And that was really, that was really a neat aspect adds to the. That we're close to the west coast. We can deliver to California. We can deliver to Oregon, Washington, Idaho. You know, so we have, we basically have an in to the west coast where Vobev is located. We have a rail line, we have the airport, we have, . So, you know, we have a lot of different ways to not only go west coast, we can go east coast or Midwest to. You know, that that really is why we ended up where we were, it started with the people, and then there was all these other great things that happened. Yeah,

Cory Connors: 7:43

I've heard great things about Utah. And I know of a couple of other great companies there. Packsize and other things, my friend, Adam Peek lives there. He's the one who told me about you guys. And it's, it's really cool. So let's dive a little bit more into the details. You guys print the cans in house. Do what, tell me about, are you doing flexo print? You're doing sleeved cans. So,

Eric Cudnohoske: 8:06

so today we we have the. To print in line. So the traditional cans. So again, I think another piece that we can talk about too, is the equipment that Vobev has is, is the equipment that, that all the other can makers or canned fillers have. There's there, there's not some, it's not some cheap down and dirty thing. These are, these are the real deal. So w we can do labeling in line so we can, can label. We also have the ability to sleeve . We can sleep if, if needed. And then we're looking at all sorts of other ways to do things with printing for the future. We had to kind of draw the line somewhere. So it said, you know what we can, we can do the traditional inline printing and we'll get sleeving. And then we'll look at, at other things and bring that on as we see fit. And as, as the the industry sees fit in all honesty.

Cory Connors: 8:57

So that's a direct. Yes. Flexographic yep, yep. For, for color maps, it's,

Eric Cudnohoske: 9:03

it's more, it's more than four. I think what, what we can say to that today is that, you know, we're, again, we're doing what everybody else is doing. Gotcha. Maybe a little different, but, but in general we have the ability to do the colors that are out there. That's amazing. Wow. Actually it actually is, you know, coming night, come from the plastics industry. So used to rotogravure, flexographic printing, I've seen the, the generations going from four to six to eight, to 10 to multiple colors and those types of things in coming here looking at this technology very similar. But again, I'm, I'm really, it's really amazing at how, how that printing has, has really grown. You know, there hasn't been a, you know, it's really been its own since the beginning. It's, it's done well with what it's done and now we're in the process of actually changing it. And we, we have some technology along with other folks other than, you know, there's, there's all sorts of new technologies. That's, what's kinda neat right now because of, because of COVID because of the aluminum cans, shortages innovation is happening within the canning industry on how can we do things. How can we make things sharper, you know, all, all these different things. And it's neat that we can be on the front side of that.

Cory Connors: 10:19

I totally agree. That's an amazing system you guys have developed. Can you speak a little bit to the diversity of your abilities? Can you do 12 ounce, 16 ounce or agent sleeks I

Eric Cudnohoske: 10:30

can, I can, I can surely talk to that. So again, we kind of have. We had to draw the line. Obviously we'd love to do it all, but we, but there there's, there's a lot of reasons we can't at least initially so what we're going to start off with is we're going to start off with the 3 55 milliliters, 12 ounce. Sleek can. Yup. We will also do the 250 milliliter, 8.4 ounce slim can . So we have those options available right away. And then in the future, we're looking, you know, we got our campuses 1.2 million. The main building is 850,000 square feet. So we have a lot of room and, and I think one of the neat things with Bobo is that we can pivot. So we have space. So we'll, you know, as we move along, you know, obviously we saw the need in the industry to help those with sleek cans and slim cans. But that doesn't mean that's where it's going to be in a year or two years or three years. And we have the space to pay. And do something else with, with cans. So just because we're, we're doing the 3 55 and the two 50 right now, doesn't mean that's what we're going to always do. We'll have that ability, but, but we may change and change directions if we need to.

Cory Connors: 12:14

Those are very popular cans right now. So I think I think you've chosen wisely the 12 and the 16 ounce, you know, with the 2 0 2 LOE N does is, is pretty covered by ball and crown and our dos. So it makes sense that you guys would pick a niche.

Eric Cudnohoske: 12:31

see falls within the Volbella business model. So Volvo Bev. When, when again, I'd love to say that, that we had the crystal ball. We really did. You know, we, when we were looking we want to service the small and mid-sized customers the big guys, they do a great job at servicing those big customers. I mean, that's what they're built for and, and we appreciate it. You know, what, what happened with, with COVID in the aluminum cans, shortages, those, those little guys and the medium size guys got squeezed a little bit. And you know, and so we, we had this business model before and it, and it's really coming to fruition. That we're going to be able to help those guys that really haven't been able to then help for a lot of different reasons over the past couple of years. If you look out on the industry today from an innovation standpoint, there hasn't been a lot. There's been a lot of cannibalization or copying, but there really hasn't been a whole lot of innovation. That's largely because. Those those little medium sized guys, aren't, aren't being able to innovate right now because they, they have these large canned quantities or, or, or they can't get cancer or whatever. Can't get filled time. Hopefully Volbella will be able to fit that niche a little bit and and, and help them. And that's actually one of the things that we want. We want salt lake city to be known for as, as a beverage. You know, we want the ability to, when, when you're thinking about beverages, when you're thinking about new ideas, you're thinking about not necessarily vote, but salt lake city in the, in that hub and the Schick and, and all that cool stuff that comes along with Utah, you know, that that's really where we want to be.

Cory Connors: 14:04

Great place to live. I've heard great very diverse area, lots of hiking things to do. Sounds awesome to me

Eric Cudnohoske: 14:11

and stuff. But I was out here in 2002. I did some work in Provo and the, the, the large infrastructure had just been put in for the Olympics and, you know, so I got to see, I got to see salt lake city before it was what it is today. And when we came back out here last year, I was, I was shocked. I mean, just how it's grown and, and what's changed and it's, it is, it is a great place to live. It's a great place to fam I got, I got a family I brought out here. It is a, it is a very neat place to be. And you know, we, we enjoy the outdoors and we haven't had a lot of time to enjoy it this year yet. So that was full down.

Cory Connors: 14:51

It's a

Eric Cudnohoske: 14:51

little bit, what we look forward to actually enjoying the outdoors and enjoying some of those other things that, that you can offer.

Cory Connors: 15:00

Tell me a little bit about your family, your how many? So,

Eric Cudnohoske: 15:04

Three daughters my my lovely wife and I just celebrated our 25 years this year. So thank you. You know, I originally came from Wisconsin. We're from Wisconsin and. I like to say we've dropped our kids off at every stop. So our oldest is Cincinnati, Ohio, middle one is going to stay in Columbus, Ohio, and then the, we have a 16 year old and she came with us out to Utah. But, you know, so it's, it's, it's been fun, little try, you know? But, but at the same time, I, I think it's just, it's a neat opportunity all the way around, you know, not only Vobev , but the opportunity to. To Utah, to almost the west coast. Not quite

Cory Connors: 15:44

sure. Yeah. Well you know, I live in Oregon on the west coast and my kids are young six and nine. And I w I want to get them to experience all parts of America and all parts of the world. Right. I think you're right to give them that opportunity.

Eric Cudnohoske: 16:02

It is, and it was you know, again, looking back. So when, when we left Wisconsin, it was not many people do. I mean, I think a lot of people, you know, humans are humans and they don't like change. So pretty much a lot of times where you are, is where you are. And, and I was, I was, we were looking, we were looking for what's what's out on the other side of the wall and you know, so, and it gave, it, gave our family a lot of opportunity to see. How other, how things work other places and you know, I think it's been great. Again, our, our, the littlest daughter, the 16 year old is a well-rounded individual just because of the different experiences that she's been able to see over her lifetime, which you know, again, I'm, I'm, I'm really.

Cory Connors: 16:42

That's amazing. A great opportunity as a parent to get, to expose them to new opportunities and new things. What, well then a couple more questions about the details here with the cans. I recently posted a video about how on the inside of an aluminum can there's a plastic. Are you guys using BPA BPA and eye liners? Like, like the industry or is

Eric Cudnohoske: 17:09

this so that's that's so it's, it's you know, I think you describe it. Well, it's, it's, it's a liner immediately. Is it plastic or epoxy ? It's a line and yeah, the. The majority of what we do is a BP. And I, and that's because again we're, we're a west coast company that are the good folks in California will only accept BPNI. And I that's. Right. So you know, if we want to sell in California, we have to do that. And then just by proxy, it's just, it's, it's easily. You know, less changeovers and things like that, that, that you kinda, you just migrate to that. And, and again, it's the right thing to do. You know, we, we definitely want to put out, you want to think Vobev , you want to think a safe quality product and that's the easiest way is let's put out a BPNI product or, or BPA free in parenthesis is what that is. So and that's what, again what a lot of the other folks that are making cans , they are doing. And, and we're going to do the same thing.

Cory Connors: 18:06

So this, this podcast is called sustainable packaging withCory Connors can you tell us why aluminum cans are a sustainable.

Eric Cudnohoske: 18:14

So aluminum cans, you know, it, it's neat. Again, I'm up from the plastics industry. So I'm working on,

Cory Connors: 18:21

Hey, I'm not, I'm not against plastic. I think they all have their, their purposes and we all need to work together.

Eric Cudnohoske: 18:30

And that was, you know, so. I mean, I was in the plastics industry from 99 on and you know, we were always, always trying to find ways for, for more recyclability, better recyclability, more sustainable. How do you do that with plastic? Right? It can be done, but again in all honesty, it was costly. You know, there was, there's a cost to sustainability. I think there's still a cost of sustainability with aluminum, but it's, it's in our culture today. That's the difference. You know, aluminum is the most recycled. Thing in the world really. And and it's sustainable, you know, what's neat. What I've learned is, you know, that the aluminum, it gets recycled and, and when you get recycled aluminum, there's many, many, many times it's even stronger than what it was when it's Virgin. So it's, it's really kind of cool when you say that, you know, Hey, we're, we're, we're making. We made a choice to do something that, yeah. Is it, is it out there are people used to it today? Aluminum cans. Yes. But you can also do cool things with sustainability. You can do cool things. I think that the, the adder that we got is the aluminum can, but then you also have the smaller carbon footprint that the decreased. In shipping and all those types of things, which is just, it, it, it just increases that sustainability card so much more.

Cory Connors: 19:55

I think, especially nowadays, and you're saving your customers money freight, as we all know has skyrocketed in cost. It's incredible. That's if that's, if you can get it picked up, right. And you know, and that's not a slight on any freight company right now, they're all doing the best that they can with the resources that they have. Our drivers that are still working are doing amazing jobs. If you don't have to ship from. Two states away and essentially an empty truck, you know, it's mostly filled with air and you can do it right in house. That's pretty darn

Eric Cudnohoske: 20:31

impressive. It's interesting that, you know you know, I, I was, I developed. So white papers, if you want to call them that for plastics industry. Right. You know, it was, why do you want to ship a can they're shipping air? You know, so you know, when you've got a power, which is flat, you can get a lot more in a truck and all that kind of stuff. And I don't think. The, the business model that was even really contemplated, but you know, you get rid of that, that, that argument goes away and, and, and it also becomes a pretty I think a pretty strong argument for sustainability. And especially here in, in Utah, in the valley, you know, we, we really want to get a lot of those trucks or as many as we can off the road because of the, because we're in a valley and because of the air quality and all other sorts of. And, you know, again, I think if, if there's anything that what we have can do about it, that's one of the ways we can get some of those trucks off. We're really not decreasing. We're not taking away anything from anybody. We're we're in many ways adding.

Cory Connors: 21:31

Yeah. And you're freeing up those trucks to, to deliver other packaging that we need help with. So thank you. I thought we came out anything we can do and we appreciate it. Experiencing unprecedented demand as, as all packaging companies are and or most I should say. And so we appreciate that. Yeah. So we'll Vobev plan to expand to other locations some days that possible.

Eric Cudnohoske: 21:59

So I think what we'll say to that is that, you know, we want to get this up, you know, I never say never, right. You'd never say, but I think the biggest thing is. We got to get this thing out and we got to prove this thing out. You know, it's, it's, it's a monumental task, but I think when it, when it happens and when we get going and when we're successful, I think then we, we kind of, the world is ours. What, what else can we. There's a lot of real estate there to fill, so it's not going to happen. You know, I would say, you know, for us to, to fill that it's not going to happen overnight. There's going to be a time and there's going to be learning. I think that's the other piece to this that I'm always telling the team you know, we're, we're not going to be right all the time. We're going to learn through this whole thing. There's things that, that we think of have been right. Or maybe the industry did, and we're going to learn maybe a different way or something different. And we're going to have to take all that. And then we're going to have to sit back. And we're going to have to say, okay, what makes sense or what doesn't make sense and then move forward.

Cory Connors: 22:57

That's, that's a great way of doing business. I'm very impressed with you and your company. Well done. A couple more questions. If, if I'm, if I'm a customer and I'm calling, I want to place an order. What's what's a minimum order

Eric Cudnohoske: 23:11

run. So we're still working on minimum order quantities, because again, what we're, what we're doing is different. You know, I think, I think what we're, what we can say is that we're, we're keen to what the minimum work quantities are to. At least I'll say pre COVID, let's say that. Because I think minimum quantities have gone up quite a bit. So we're trying to see where that makes sense for Vobev . We're still working on our costing and pricing models. So we, we don't know where that sweet spot is, but we do know again, if we're going to service those, the smaller and mid-size customers, you know, those minimum order quantity is, are going to have to be. Where they can take a chunk off, not, not in these, in these huge minimum order quantities. Right.

Cory Connors: 23:55

I remember 12 ounce cans, 12 ounce, regular cans are about 208,000 per truckload. And that Was a minimum run for cans when we were, when we were buying quite a few and then sleeve cans came out and they said, oh, we can do one pallet. And we said, whoa, that's amazing. And then they said, ah, let's make it two. And then probably three. Yeah, just, just kidding.

Eric Cudnohoske: 24:21

And you're right. I mean, and that's, it's, it's interesting as we've kind of gone out and did some looking around and that's exactly right. You know, where it all depends. And that's why we're, we're, we're trying to really make sure. The first time so that we're not saying, oh, just kidding. You know, we, we, we really meant this. We really want to be become kind of the experts in the industry on this and make sure that, that, you know, we're, we're treating our customers and everybody else the right way.

Cory Connors: 24:52

It sounds like you are so well done. Yeah. The last question I had regarding the process is when. So you, you get the order from the customer, you get the artwork, everything set up. You've proved the can do they deliver the beverage in, in a tanker truck or in tote bins or good question.

Eric Cudnohoske: 25:17

That's a great question. So we can do it a couple of different ways, Cory . So again, we'll, we'll, we'll get the can, whatever that is, and we'll bring it over to the fill side . For, for our, for Vobev, initially, we're going to do waters carbonated, soft drinks, energy drinks. I kind of that first flight second flight in 22 fast followers are going to be wine spirits and hard seltzers out of that, out of all of those really we can do so on our first, our first phase, you know, we can do basically all of that. They don't have the customer. Doesn't have to give us any, any. Anything, unless they have Watson, right. When it comes to the, the second, the alcohol liquors probably wine we'll come in. We'll, we'll bring in wine hard seltzer. We'll probably bring in the, the fermented malt because we really, we don't have that capability today to do a fermenting or malting, really. So so that's where we see kind of maybe a tanker coming in or, or a rail, you know, a rail tank or something like that. But, but right off the bat, it's, it's, we'll, we'll probably be able to use the, what we have at hand trying to help as much as we can from a transportation and cost standpoint that, that I think that will help. And then we'll always be looking for better ways. You know, again, as I said, a lot of real estate, maybe we look at other ways to do business. Maybe we look at multi, maybe we look at all these other things don't know right now.

Cory Connors: 26:40

That's so exciting. You guys there's so much potential here. I feel the energy and man, I'm, I'm, I'd love to have you on in six months again and just see where you guys are at.

Eric Cudnohoske: 26:50

Oh, I'd love to be. I mean, there's a lot, you know, I, one thing I want to close with is again, Vobev we, we kind of have a Vobev triangle. We call it safety, quality people. Without any one of those, you're not going to be successful. When it comes to the people it's really important for Vobev. You know, we've we've done know, Adam helped us sell it. You're helping us out. And you know what, it's really cool. Cause Vobev is on the tip of a lot of folks tongues in the valley. We've had just we, we did a hiring fair a week ago and had, you know, almost a hundred people show up with very limited advertising. We're here. We're doing another one next week and we're, there's like over 200. You know, so when, when you said you feel, you feel the energy, you feel the vibe that's, that's all regenerating, you know, and that's real and that's not going to go away. Vobev is, is going to be something different for a lot of different people. And and we're excited for that. You know, we really, really want to. To help change, not only the lives of our employees, but also salt lake city, Utah and everybody else, you know, we, we wanna, we want to do something good,

Cory Connors: 28:03

well done. And it looks like you are. I absolutely support what you guys are doing. It's incredibly innovative. It's very sustainable. What What's the best way for us to get in touch with you guys. Sure.

Eric Cudnohoske: 28:13

Yeah. Great. Great question. So the easiest way is, is volbella.com Vobev.com so we have a landing page. It's not a full fledge website yet, but it's a landing page. You get some of the ideas and you got, you got a link. That'll get you into the career side or the sales side. The other way you could hit us is a sales@vobev.com . So if you've got a question for sales, you got to lead, you got something you can hit us up there. You know, we're working on, on social media. You can find us on LinkedIn. That's been, that's been pretty cool. The LinkedIn side of things Adam helped us a ton. But there's, there's also, you know, the, the other media experiences that we've had the local media has, has been very supportive of both. So it's been the LinkedIn side again. I, I jokingly said, you know, my, my LinkedIn account, like got overworked to the, as degree six weeks ago.

Cory Connors: 29:07

That's great.

Eric Cudnohoske: 29:09

It's great. It's, it's neat. It's a, you know, it, it, it made me feel that, Hey, you know what, we're doing the right thing. People, people are interested. They're, they're looking at what's going on and, and, and that's just, it's really, it's cool.

Cory Connors: 29:23

That's amazing. When, when do you think production will start? What's the ETA

Eric Cudnohoske: 29:28

fourth quarter, which actually starts next Friday, which isn't going to be next Friday. We're thinking probably mid to end of fourth quarter is where we'll we'll come up and both sides. So again, Volvo three, three different business units, the can making side the can filling side and then the logistics side. So we feel that have. Hopefully a couple of cylinders by the end

Cory Connors: 29:49

of the day. Well, that's very impressive and congratulations, and thank you again for your time today. I want to thank Landsberg ORORA for sponsoring this podcast and all the listeners support. Please be sure to rate and share this podcast with your friends so we can keep making great episodes. Thank you again, Eric. I appreciate you.

Eric Cudnohoske: 30:11

Appreciate your time. Great. Thank you so much. And I do look forward to talking to you. Let's call it six months.

Cory Connors: 30:16

I am in. Let's do it. Thank you.

Eric Cudnohoske: 30:18

Thank you.