Chief Sustainability Officer David Murgio (Ranpak)

https://www.ranpak.com/

Check out Ranpak today , here is their website and ESG report 

https://www.ranpak.com/sustainability/

How has Ranpak been leading the way in sustainability for over 50 years? 

Why does paper make such a great option for shipping? 

Did you know Ranpak has amazing automation equipment? 

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:15

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is the most viewed episode of all time, our first episode ever, a return to Mr. David Mergio the chief sustainability officer at our partner Ranpak . Welcome, sir.

David Murgio: 0:36

Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm proud to have been the first and I'm glad to be back. Cory and Brody.

Cory Connors: 0:42

Best episode ever. well, most viewed, most listened to episode of all time. 350 something episodes later. we're so honored to have you back, sir. Wonderful. Thank you.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 0:54

It's like a circular economy of the

David Murgio: 0:57

that's right. It's the circular economy of the podcast where we've gotten full circle.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 1:00

Yeah. I'm so excited. I, I. before joining the podcast, I've been a big fan of the podcast, as we all know, so loved listening to your first episode. And so I'm really excited to be back for your 2nd, hopefully we'll be able to do another 1 and hopefully not 5 years later,

David Murgio: 1:16

but I hope so too,

Brodie Vander Dussen: 1:18

for those who maybe didn't listen to the 1st episode. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? How you got to be where you're at? and yeah, sure. Sure. So my

David Murgio: 1:25

background, I actually come from a legal background. I was a lawyer for a number of years. and, in that role, I was a corporate lawyer working on large corporate transactions. So in that role, my job really consisted of managing huge projects with lots of different. Inputs and lots of different people with different expertise is and, along the way, I ended up as the general counsel, a company called one Madison, which in turn acquired and brought ramp act public. And after one Madison brought ramp act public, I became the chief sustainability officer and the, there are obvious synergies like, there's a lot of regulatory stuff going on with sustainability right now. I can read a law. I can read some regulation, understand what it means, and that's all good and disclosure. Is stuff that I had done in my prior life, but the big real connection is. This idea of pulling together lots of different people with lots of different expertises towards a single goal in a single direction and a single project. So I'm working with sales. I'm working with procurement. I'm working with operations, working with marketing and most of my projects is just about everything. I do is chief sustainability officer. It really involves pulling together all these different constituencies internally and getting everybody marching in the same direction, which oddly enough is a lot like what. A corporate transactional lawyer does.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 2:43

I love that though. I think, so often we talk about in the. Sustainability space, specifically a sustainable packaging space. We talk about how it takes everybody involved. Everyone has to be at the table to really make a difference and make an impact. so often we have these conversations almost in silos and pilots fail, things don't work. you get down the line and something super sustainable, but it doesn't perform well because we didn't pull the right people in to test it. And therefore it's not really sustainable, So we really have to have everyone together. Right. First thing intention,

David Murgio: 3:15

absolutely. And the first, I always say like the most important thing for sustainable to be a sustainable product is that it works, right? If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter what it's made of. Nothing else matters, right? Exactly. In our business. if the product gets broken during shipping, it doesn't matter what it's wrapped in, what it was chipped in, right? It's a sustainable disaster. absolutely agree with you 1000%. And one of the fun things about being a chief sustainability officer, especially if your company like Rampack, whose mission is sustainability is sustainable oriented, it's a. it's, we're not like an oil company, right? Our core mission is sustainability related. One of the fun things and the best things about being chief sustainability officer is the ability to see across all those silos, just like you said, and connect all those different pieces and really get a top down integrated. Sense of the business. And that's just really fun. I love talking to guys on the floor and in our assembly spaces. I like talking to marketing people, salespeople, everything. So a hundred percent agree with you, Brody.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 4:16

I think that's the fun part. It's like very creative. it's, there's a lot that you get to do, but you get to work with so many different people

David Murgio: 4:23

and

Brodie Vander Dussen: 4:23

working styles, different goals. Pull everyone together. It's makes that win so much better.

Cory Connors: 4:29

Absolutely. 100 percent. I was excited to go to Eigelschaben in Europe, your European headquarters. Brand new facility. It's a beautiful facility, incredibly sustainable. They brought me on the roof and showed me all the, it was neat to be able to see all the solar panels, but you could see Germany and Holland. I was just like From the roof, right on the border of all these different areas. And to see an old, what's it a coal plant or something that had been shuttered years ago and to see the growth and the change in sustainable focus, sustainability focus. So impressive, but you've got, a history there. Absolutely. I think we should mention that you, we, before you started, we, before we started, you had said when Ranpak started and can you speak to that a little bit? Absolutely. So Ranpak, David Murgio: Ranpak is, the longterm history and let's talk about what we've been doing for the last five years since we last spoke. the longterm history, it's it's. Oddly prophetic, right? in the sense that the first Earth Day was, I want to say, it was April, late April ish, 1970. Two or three weeks thereafter, in early May, 1970, the first patent was filed for the first pad pack. Ranpak didn't even exist yet. Frankly, as an organization, it wasn't formed for another year or two, but that first patent that, locked down the IP for our pad pack, which we still have a pad pack today, it looks very different than that first pad pack, a lot more high tech. It's a lot prettier. It does everything much better, but our roots are pretty much. Line up pretty perfectly with Earth Day, and it's exciting to be here. 52 years later to see everything that's happened, how much we've expanded. that first pad pack was a product that used paper, not plastic, used paper for packaging for secondary packaging. We used paper before the sustainability was cool, right? We've always been paper. From the beginning. and it's really in our roots. people say it's in our DNA. this is we were nothing without paper that we didn't exist. There was no part of our business that existed in plastic. We are paper from the beginning. It's sustainable from the beginning. And it's really exciting to see how far we've come as a society caring about this stuff. And as a business, effectuating this kind of change in the global supply chain. it's it's a wonderful thing to be a part of. It's an impressive history and you're exactly right. This is not a, flash in the pan. This is something that you've always focused on and it's been the, impetus for many innovations. I think it's exciting to see. It was really cool to see that first machine or one of the first machines there. and it's clunky

David Murgio: 7:25

and big and square and ugly. And then to look

Cory Connors: 7:27

around the room at these elegant, beautiful pieces of equipment. Absolutely. That, are cutting edge technology using AI and machine learning. I was like, whoa, this is such a dichotomy of old and new and, but always focus on sustainability. Absolutely.

David Murgio: 7:44

100%. and the last five years since we spoke, we've taken, it's just amazing how much we've come in the last five years, even, the company was doing great for its first. 48 years or whatever it is, but the last 5 years has been just so much fun and exciting to be a part of. we've upgraded and expanded our footprint. we started rent it by the gut renovation of our global headquarters in Ohio. We. Built Eigelshoven, a Breen, certified building. 50 percent of our power is onsite solar. that building, which I always think is so funny as a, as an American, doesn't have a natural gas line, which is so bizarre to me. It's all electric and 50 percent of that energy is, is solar. We've built, as I think you know, we've expanded, we have an 80, 000 square foot Automation headquarters in Shelton, Connecticut, which is a new facility came online about 18 months ago. Super exciting facility. A lot of stuff going on there. And I know we'll talk about automation more. And then our most recent addition on the footprint side is Malaysia. we've opened a new, paper conversion facility in Malaysia. Which is exciting because it allows us to service, the Pacific, the Pacific Rim, Australia, Japan, South Korea, all those countries, New Zealand locally. Which also is a huge boon for sustainability. We're not shipping stuff across the world anymore, as that plant rolls, ramps up and we're gonna get to a point. We're not shipping stuff across the world and allows us to serve all of our customers globally much closer to their point of service. So that's super exciting. and then we'll talk more about products. with so many new products in the last five years, we've got and then I want to talk about automation and AI, but I'm doing all the talking. You guys talk. I don't want to cut you all off. No,

Brodie Vander Dussen: 9:33

I didn't want to cut you off because that was going to be my next question of, what have you been up to the last five years? I think your footprint is amazing. I think, a lot of times that transportation,

David Murgio: 9:45

huh.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 9:47

Environmental costs, I'll say is not taken into consideration. It's, the money is really important. we have to make it work,

David Murgio: 9:54

but

Brodie Vander Dussen: 9:55

often we're not really considering the carbon impact of shipping something on a truck across the country versus on a ship versus what, if you can do it locally, there's so much, there's such an impact that could have. But I would really love to learn, I know Rampact's always been in the business of paper, but I'd really love to learn more. We got to talk to, Brian, a few weeks ago, a few months ago, about some of the products you guys have coming out that are really cool in automation. Can you tell me a little bit more about the products you guys have come out with, in the last five years?

David Murgio: 10:25

Sure.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 10:26

but you're excited about? Yeah,

David Murgio: 10:27

absolutely. So obviously automation. We'll talk about automation in a minute. Let's put that off to the side because that's a huge, that's been a huge investment of ours. I think it's super exciting. It's going to revolutionize everything about fulfillment aside from automation, which we'll come back to. we've put out. Um, we've launched a whole new cold chain line, right? both cold packs and, rest cold and climate liner pads that are 100 percent paper to replace those EPS, those styrofoam boxes to allow for temperature controlled shipment. that's an exciting thing. Huge boon to sustainability. We've launched Guardian a couple of years ago and, relaunched, Upgraded or, Guardian is predominantly a, cushioning product. So we think about our business, our paper businesses, wrapping, void, fill, cushioning, wrapping, being replacing bubble wrap with a paper, with our GMI products and wrapping household wares, void, fill being the, filling the empty spaces and boxes mostly used by e commerce people. But we have this whole cushioning business, which is more about. Which is more geared towards industrial, customers who need to ship heavy things. auto parts, aircraft parts, tools, think big hunks of metal, and that's a super exciting thing for me on the sustainability side, because historically that has been such an unsustainability. The kind of legacy technology, foams in place, these are terrible things for the environment. Terrible things for the environment. So the ability to create a paper product that can replace those, those technologies for more industrial applications is a super exciting thing. cushioning is a big thing. we're, we've rolled out a nature mailer, 100 percent paper envelope, mailer envelope designed to replace polys to reduce plastic there. We've, we've got a new product coming out now that we're launching. We're in the process of launching. I think it's gonna be a pro mat next week. paper wrap. Which super exciting product, but paper wrap is it's a, it's with a partnership with Mondis, a European, paper mill, right? Paper manufacturer and a company called paper wrap also out of Europe. And what we're doing is we're bringing this technology to the U. S. To wrap pallets with paper as opposed to plastic films. When you think about All the pallets that are wrapped and they get wrapped and shipped and everywhere. this is a massive opportunity to reduce our supply chain reliance on plastic massive. And this is a product that we're super excited about. it works, it's sustainable. It's curbside recyclable. and it, it's cost competitive with plastic wraps. the idea of being able to, wrap beverage. all these industries that Ranpak hasn't historically necessarily been involved in. this is just a, it's a step change in our ability to bring, to bring paper to the supply chain and reduce reliance on plastic. So that's super exciting.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 13:27

I think even I totally agree. I'm stoked about the idea of, an opportunity to move, but traditionally, we just really haven't had anything that have really fit, to be a good switch out, I would say, but another, I think a huge impact is packaging EPR. If you're shipping into the states, plastic compared to paper by weight is something that you're going to, you're going to have to make that decision. It's going to

David Murgio: 13:52

impact.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 13:53

It's going to be another layer of cost that hasn't traditionally been a part of the equation. So switching for something like that is going to be huge.

David Murgio: 14:01

Absolutely. and our, for us, because we're global business, we're dealing with, in the U. S. EPR is on the come. I know Oregon is further along, California is coming along. but our experience in Europe is it's real right now. we have customers in Europe who want to know what is the additional cost. How do I, it's another item. It's another, another fact on which to make a comparison between plastic and paper. And it's, as a human being, I think it's terrific. As, as I think it's wonderful that we're incentivizing people to use more recyclable packaging material as, the chief sustainability officer at Ranpak packets. Just terrific because it's right down our wheelhouse

Cory Connors: 14:39

sure has helped your sales. I know. Yeah, that's great

David Murgio: 14:42

for sure. Well, I

Cory Connors: 14:44

think that's what speaks to the green bottom line and the bottom line being, being very, intertwined. And I think this is what we're trying to say is for many years, people said, Oh, sustainable packaging is more expensive. And it was. It used to be. Used to be. Used to be. And now, if you don't move to more sustainable options, it's going to hit your bottom line in a negative way, because like you said, PPWR, EPR, all these things coming.

David Murgio: 15:13

And also, not only that, but we, we're in this weird transition place about where we're going on sustainability, on this, in our national politics and everything. But the reality is all of that aside, all of that aside, I have, three kids in their twenties. So they're old enough to know, but still young, they will not, the sustainability of what they're buying and the sustainability of a company will dictate their By their consumer choices. and I don't think that's going to change. I think anything, whatever happens up in the air is not going to change that. I think that we're enjoying and I'm thankful to my kids and their generations that we're enjoying this kind of zero sum push towards a more sustainable future. And that's the way it should be. what's the definition of sustainability, right? Definite sustainability that I always go to, how do you do what you need to do today in the way that least adversely affects conditions tomorrow? That's all it's about. How can we do what we do today in a way that least adversely affects our kids and grandkids lives? and our kids are telling us now, do it!

Brodie Vander Dussen: 16:23

Right? I've often heard the Generation Z and even a little bit of Gen Alpha, they're still pretty young, but Generation Z referred to as the justice generation because they care deeply about justice. And I think that translates to a lot of issues, but I think it also translates to environmental too. Absolutely. we're watching. you can't go to the beach, you can't go to a national park, you can't go to a park, or, there's everywhere you go, there is trash, and it's outside of where it should be going, and we're watching, so much of what could have been be, put new houses in, there's so much going on that I think we're just watching This feeling like there's a sense of justice involved in that, and I think that speaks for an undercurrent of this consumer habit that I don't think is going away.

David Murgio: 17:14

Absolutely, and that goes right to the bottom line. to your point, EPR is the direct cost, but this indirect cost is the next generation of consumers are just going to say no if you're not doing it, right? Yeah, which is wonderful.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 17:28

Yeah,

David Murgio: 17:29

I think as a human being, it's wonderful.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 17:31

And I think small changes, right, when, as a consumer, if you start using a brand, you, that has a difference, you notice that difference. Then if you do go back to a different brand that, maybe isn't as sustainable, and now I have all of this packaging that I have to throw away, I don't want to buy that again. it's this experience, user experience that I don't think, I'm excited to see more brands really pay attention to is what I'll say. I

David Murgio: 17:55

agree with you 100%. I agree with you and to segue to our automation. I know that's where we want to go. our automation business, right? So Rampact, when we last spoke, we had an automation business, but it was very small since then we've invested a ton, our automation business and our automation business is a little different from our historic paper business, right? Our historic paper business was about selling relatively, I'm not going to say low tech, but, basic relatively. Leasing inexpensive machines that dispense paper into boxes. and our automation systems are different, right? What we, what our automation systems do, these are large pieces of capital equipment. For high volume users, right? Our P. S. System. We call our P. S. Our papers, our paper business serves everybody from little guys in the back of their garage selling ceramics up to, 24 7 massive fulfillment centers are automation business. Our automation equipment is more geared towards larger, higher volume people. And what that, what those machines promise is the ability to effectively fit the box to product. our box sizing equipment, the product goes into one end, the sensors, the AI, the machine vision senses the product, and then it goes through and the boxes, the box height is reduced to meet the needs of the product. So what does that mean? Why does that matter? It matters hugely. Because without that box sizing, which is the way most of the world works right now, what are people shipping? They're shipping air. You're shipping tons of empty void. So what our business does by establishing and customizing the height of the box with this equipment does is it allows you to pack more packages onto a palette and the same palette, cool. the same cubic space of a palette. You get more boxes on there. What's that mean? Fewer trucks. What does that mean? From an economic perspective? most of our customers all ship by dim weight, right dimension by weight. Now, each product has a smaller dimension. They're paying less for shipping. so they're both sustainability. There is economic benefits to these this equipment, and it's a super, super exciting. Thing to see being built and those machines. I know Corey you've seen them. They're just impressive they just you know stuff flies through them and it's it's just an amazing thing I

Cory Connors: 20:21

I was totally impressed. Yeah, and Brody and I were given Brian a bad time about all the names. They're Obviously named

David Murgio: 20:29

the it names, right?

Cory Connors: 20:31

Cut it

David Murgio: 20:32

print it right. What is there to do? Oh, that's it Okay. Corey and

Brodie Vander Dussen: 20:35

I were in Paris for Paris packaging week. And we ran into this, walked past this, what was it? Store Corey. It was like print it or something like that. And I was like, Oh,

David Murgio: 20:44

must

Cory Connors: 20:47

be a retail outlet. Such an awesome company and really impressed with the innovations. I did want to tell a quick story one time. My career as a salesperson, I, we switched out a company, shipping very heavy, very fragile items, to your pad pack senior and, the coworkers came over to me and shook my hand and said, thank you. Because they were using foam in place, and they were, they showed me their t shirts that had holes in them from the chemicals, and they were just so thankful. it becomes, Brody and I have talked about this a lot, sustainability becomes a health issue at a certain point. Absolutely.

David Murgio: 21:27

Especially compared to foam in place. foam in place is such a dirty, for the poor, for the workers who have to use it. it's 100%. totally.

Cory Connors: 21:38

And of course it was effective. It works. Yeah, of course. And that was great. and, but I think the technology is improving. 100 percent agree. There's so many great options that RAMPAC has that can package anything. And I had another customer using RAMPAC CC machines for lighter items. And they asked me, how can we lower the cost here? So we did a whole thing where we showed them how to use less material and just the right amount of material. This is, before you had your automation equipment. We saved them 25 percent the next month. just by being creative with how we packed the material.

David Murgio: 22:23

and absolutely. And that's one of the other super exciting things over the past few years that you wouldn't necessarily associate with kind of an old school manufacturing packaging company. And that is our. Reliance, commitment, investment in AI, machine, machine learning, machine, vision, and all of that is just super, super exciting. It goes to exactly what you're saying. the, um. it's manifold. the, so our automation equipment all works with, our credits, which are the box sizing, equipment all works with machine vision and scanning and. Decision tower. That's right. That's what I want to get to the decision tower. That to me is the most exciting piece of equipment. the decision tower is a tower that sits over that. It's like a doorway that the conveyor goes through and the decision tower. What's so exciting about the decision tower is we've got machine vision on top, scanning void, scanning everything. But what I think is so exciting and so cool. The way our applications work now that the result of those scans tells the equipment how high the box should be. It tells the auto fill how much void fill should go in it. and we're really at the beginning of this revolution because what we're seeing and what we're learning is that piece of equipment, the decision tower is an opportunity to collect so much data and to create So much additional value for our customers value that I honestly believe we don't even understand yet what it is. We as a society. it's like we end up with the ability for customers just off the top of my head. Easy things. I'm a lawyer, right? EPR. Scanning and cataloging all of the packaging equipment, all the packaging materials for a shipper who's subject to EPR decision tower. That's a software issue decision tower. We can figure out the software, taking pictures inside the boxes. So dealing with whether the actual products were in the boxes or not in the boxes. it is. It's like, how do I think about this? It's I feel like, It's now I'm not a technologist. Let me just say right up front, I don't understand that stuff. Really? I'm not a data scientist, but I feel like it's like for data scientists who are interested in this stuff and fulfillment, it's like being kids in candy stores, because you've just got this array of potential data that can be taken from this piece of equipment. and it just, there's going to be ripple effects. and so much of what we're doing is focusing on that data in order to make the fulfillment process. More efficient, more sustainable in ways that I feel like we're just at the beginning of that we can't even imagine today. And that's super, super exciting. Totally agree. Yeah,

Brodie Vander Dussen: 25:20

it's a good time to be in sustainability and it's even better time to be in sustainable packaging.

David Murgio: 25:25

Absolutely. 100 percent agree with that. It's a good point.

Cory Connors: 25:29

Well, it's a great way to end the show. I think we're all so impressed with what you're doing and the team at Rampac are doing. How do we get in touch with you? How do people reach out if they want to? Well,

David Murgio: 25:40

we've got our website www. rampac. com. you can see our report on there. You can see all of our products on there. There's, there's, contact form or whatever. If you're interested in, in, in reaching out about, specific product applications that goes right to our sales team. If you've got sustainability questions, you can reach out to me. I don't mind giving my email mergio, M U R G I O dot David at Rampac. com. I love talking to people. I love talking to customers. I like hearing what people are thinking. anybody who is interested in sustainable packaging, feel free to reach out.

Cory Connors: 26:15

Thank you, sir. This has been

David Murgio: 26:16

awesome. Terrific. Thank you. It's wonderful talking to you again. Let's not make it five years. Yeah, we'll do it again soon. Thank you, sir. Talk to you.