What Happens Inside Atlantic's Packaging Solution Center

In this episode, Cory Connors welcomes Kyle Pischel and Jake Wyns to discuss the Atlantic Packaging Solutions Center — what it is, how it came to be, and the innovative work happening inside it every day. Kyle shares his background in packaging, from studying at Michigan State to working on Coca-Cola's packaging innovations team before joining Atlantic. Jake recounts his decade at Atlantic, beginning with a deep dive into stretch film and evolving into unit load stability and e-commerce packaging. Together, they walk through the science of load containment, the design program, and the future of sustainable packaging materials.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Kyle's career path from Michigan State and Coca-Cola to Atlantic Packaging and the MUST monitoring system
• Jake's background in stretch film performance testing and the fingerprinting of film properties
• The origin story of the Solution Center: from Stretch University to a full technical hub in Charlotte, NC
• How the MUST monitoring system tracks stretch film application and maintains standards set in the Solution Center
• The science of unit load containment — weight, coefficient of friction, stacking patterns, and pyramidal wrap profiles
• Over 15,000 horizontal impact tests and 5,000+ hours of vibration testing conducted at the facility
• Atlantic's holistic approach to packaging: removing strapping, corner boards, and downgauging corrugated alongside stretch film optimization
• The in-house design program led by designer Mary Ashland, focused on sustainable material substitution and end-of-life strategy
• Post-consumer recycled (PCR) content in stretch film — finding the right percentage for performance and sustainability
• The shift toward fiber-based packaging solutions and coated paper technologies for flow-wrap applications
• Atlantic's investment in Remo recycling equipment to process stretch film bales into PCR resin
• EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) legislation as a driver of reduced virgin plastic usage

Resources Mentioned:

• Atlantic Packaging Solution Center 
• MUST Monitoring System
• Landsmont multi-axis vibration equipment
• Closed Loop System for Stretch Film

Contact:
Listeners interested in a Solution Center visit or packaging consultation can reach out through Atlantic Packaging's website or connect with Kyle Pischel and Jake Wyns directly.

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Transcript

0:06

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors presented by Atlantic Packaging. I'm your host, Cory Connors. In today's episode, I connected with Kyle Pischel, the director of the Atlantic Packaging Solution Center, and Jake Wyns, a packaging development specialist and Atlantic Packaging Solution Center coordinator. We talk about some really insightful and interesting ways that we look at packaging to make it truly more sustainable for our partners. I'd also like to thank our sponsors, 3M and Specright. We couldn't do this show without them. Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. I'm so excited to have these two gentlemen on from Atlantic Packaging, two of our key members in our whole system and two of my favorite people to work with. Welcome, Kyle and Jake. Thanks for having us. glad to be here. Kyle, if you don't mind starting off, give us a little bit of your background. I know you've got a long background in packaging and really a tenured veteran. Tell us more. Yeah. Way back when I went to Michigan state and studied packaging, which I had to learn what packaging was when I was at Michigan state in a technical way. when I got done with the program there, I went to work for Coca-Cola in Atlanta and I was on their packaging innovations team. And while I was at Coca-Cola, I was doing some work in the field, surrounding stretch wrapping and wrapping unit loads. And so I met the folks over at Atlantic Packaging who had just pioneered the MUST monitoring system. The technology was new and the program was yet to be developed. And so I left the big tower in the sky and came to work for Atlantic Packaging and spent the first seven or eight years really delving deep in the stretch film world, spending time in facilities, working with equipment, understanding the material. and ultimately kind of coming up with some of our concepts for how we should wrap loads and what's most successful. That ultimately led to the Solution Center and today I have some responsibility over the Solution Center. I also work with our groups that evaluate new alternative materials and try to find application for those materials and spend a little bit of time in our design group as well. mostly all the technical comings and goings of Atlantic I tend to... stick my nose in and provide an opinion whether I want it or not. Well, we do appreciate that, Kyle. So thank you for all that you do. And Jake Wyns, how about you, sir? Yeah, so I've been with Atlantic packaging close to 10 years now. first probably two years with the company was just a deep dive into stretch film and flexible packaging. So we had a highlight test cube where we would kind of fingerprint a performance window for stretch film. So comparing different commodity and high performance stretch films and helping customers down gauge their materials. When the Solution Center opened in 2018, the emphasis shifted a bit more to focus on unit load stability. So as Kyle mentioned, focusing on wrap patterns, looking at how load containment influences different load types. So we always like to preach finding the appropriate film depending on application. And then as Atlantic is focused more on sustainability, it's also shifted a bit towards e-commerce space, so helping our customers eliminate single-use plastics and doing a lot more Vista FedEx testing and single-parcel testing. It's incredible the work that you do and that you guys do. The whole team there is really working together to help our customers use less packaging and use the right kind of packaging, which is so exciting to see. But Kyle, you mentioned the Solution Center. Can you tell the audience what the Solution Center is, how it came to be? know uh Wes Carter really started this with you and a small group there at the Solution Center. Can you tell us about it? Yeah, I think in order to really understand the solution center, it sort of has to be an understanding of the lead up to it. I mentioned the MUST monitoring system. We actually developed that with Coca-Cola and it was a little over 17 years ago at this point. And we thought we invented fire. We thought everybody would be lining up to get this technology and everybody would understand and need it. And the reality is stretch film is a bit of a category that has a lot of tribal knowledge. It's really procurement based and there just isn't a great understanding of the material and the application. so a few years into the development of the monitoring system, we invested in a flexible film lab. We hired John Cook, who Jake spent the beginning of his career with. And we really started to understand what is true and what's not. It became a myth busting for stretch film. From that we developed a program called Stretch University and we started inviting customers in to spend a day just talking about stretch film and believe it or not people came and some people came back and the information we shared was valuable to them and so as we kind of continued along our journey we got introduced to some dynamic test equipment primarily a horizontal impact test sled where we could put lateral forces into a unit load and evaluate the response. And so when we started shopping for one of those sleds, we met Landsmont and Landsmont introduced us to multi-axis vibration. And we sort of fell in love with this concept of advanced vibration that more closely replicated the real world than the majority of test units in the field focusing on packaging today. And so, you know, when we started to look for the sled and the table and we sort of had our proverbial shopping cart full of cool stuff. came down to where do we put it? And so we had some square footage in Charlotte open up and instead of just putting a couple pieces of equipment in a dusty warehouse, we decided to build around it and really create a center that represented our value proposition and how we want to engage with our customers in a very technical, data-based way. And so the solution center, what started as our... desire to sort of fast forward ship testing and all of the unreliable sort of methods to validate changes in the field and bring it in house to a controlled test platform where we could really quantify the results. And it's really ballooned at this point into a hub for all of our technical resources, a lot of our design programs, and just a continually involving facility in which we can showcase new technologies to our customers and then prove that they work all under one. Excellent. And every time I'm there, it seems like they're bringing in something new, a new innovation, a new piece of equipment. And like you said, it seems like they're updating it daily, uh even hourly, you know, with the work that you and Jake and the team are doing. So keep it up. It's exciting to see. Hey friends, we are going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Please be sure to support them. Are you shipping with recycled corrugated? Think outside the box with 3M tape. 3M packaging tape can help you overcome your recycled corrugated challenges with confidence, making sure your boxes are sealed securely the first time, reducing downtime, and providing consistent performance. With 3M as your partner, you can maintain productivity, achieve cost savings, and turn packaging problems into ceiling success. When you use recycled corrugated shipping boxes, think 3M packaging. Sustainability starts long before a product hits the shelf. It starts with the spec. That's why brands choose Specright, the leader in intelligence specification data management and modern product lifecycle management. Specright turns siloed packaging and product data to connected, reliable intelligence so AI can identify waste, optimize materials, streamline supplier collaboration, and accelerate sustainable product design. If you're trying to reduce packaging complexity or meet evolving regulations, it's time for a spec first approach. Specright, the intelligent foundation for every product. Discover more at specright.com. In packaging, still, I know a guy, but what happens when you don't? Or when you need something beyond your network? Forest is built for that. A platform that connects packaging knowledge with AI intelligence, giving you access to verified suppliers, real capabilities, and actionable data in one place. Take action at speed. Execute with intelligence. That's Forest. Jake, Kyle was talking about stretch film a lot, and I wanted to see from your opinion, how has stretch film become like a cornerstone or like a starting point for working with our customers. Yeah, I think a lot of it is, as Kyle mentioned, due to the MUST monitoring program. So I think the Solution Center is a great complement to that and really takes the program to the next level. So what that program does is monitor total revolutions of film applied, on-palette stretch, ounces of film, and break percentage. So kind of combining our knowledge of the film properties themselves, we can then set the standards in the solution center and make sure they're maintained. So typically stretch film and helping our customers reduce their material usage is a great way to get customers engaged and bring them into the solution center. But then that starts at more of a holistic view of the unit load, seeing if we can remove strapping, if we can remove corner boards, maybe potentially down gauge their uh ECT on their cases. uh First couple years of the Solution Center, were very primarily focused just on stretch film and gauge reduction and optimization of revolutions. And pretty quickly on, started to realize we had to look holistically at the tier sheets, the corner boards, and look at what types of materials we can help to reduce alongside the stretch film. And then once we set that standard in the Solution Center, that's maintained with the the MUST monitoring system. Right. Amazing. Kyle, you mentioned the design part of our, what we do there. Can you walk us through the design system, kind of that program? I know it's not your full-time job, Kyle, but it's certainly a part of what we do there. Yeah, design for Atlantic is, we've always had it to a degree. So we have a fantastic print shop, folded cart and labels group in Tabor City, North Carolina, where there's a number of designers in-house. We have a corrugated facility in Charleston where there's a number of designers in-house. And what we did here in the solution center was because we are so used to dealing with mixed materials in more of a packaging system than just a particular package. We started bringing in more of these conceptual concepts where we try to meld different materials to replace primarily problematic ones. That's where it started off is, Hey, I'm using EPS foam or I'm using this thermoform plastic tray. I want to look at pulp and cruise foam. And so our design program and the solution center really started off with how do we explore with these materials and validate their success and prove that they can work. And it's really turned into. pretty intricate system that involves everything from customer experience on the receiving end of it to the manufacturing side of the materials that we're working with. Our designer in-house, Mary Ashland, is fantastic at looking at an existing configuration or existing packaging system and rethinking what that would look like through the lens of the... brand ethos, the brand itself, who do they want to represent and be, and then also really focus heavily on the end of life strategy. How do we provide the consumers with materials that they ultimately can recycle, hopefully, at the end of use, and keep that circle moving? But our design program is cool because I think that we have a very unique approach to the way we go about it. Whereas a lot of design groups have fixed assets and fixed capabilities, where in our world, we're not necessarily tied down to as many assets. And so we can have a lot more freedom and creativity to bring a number of different materials into the equation to ultimately protect that package and provide an experience for the customer. It's a great experience. And like you said, people like to come back because this solution center is like a Mecca of packaging innovation. And it's just an awesome place that you guys have developed there. So congratulations on that. Jake, I want to talk about load containment. This is something that you've mentioned before. And I think you even talked about how many, I don't know, hundreds or thousands of different load containment patterns that we've developed. It's a science-based system that you've developed. Can you talk us through how it works, what it is, and why it's so important to our customers? Yeah, so with low containment, there's a lot of factors at play. So it's the weight of the unit load, it's the coefficient of friction of the cases or the shrink film, it's column stack for interlock stacking patterns. And then, as I mentioned, some of those other tertiary packaging beyond stretch film is it strapping and corner boards and tier sheets are all in play as well. So we like to kind of have a starting point on what the stretch film containment should be, but then all those other factors are going to influence what the containment target should be. what we look at for low containment is finding the appropriate amount of on-palette stretch percentage, getting high up in the stretch strain curve for stretch film. and then also applying typically a pyramidal pattern for load containment. So typically we can be a little bit lower on containment at the top of the load and then really reinforce the knee of the load. So the bottom third of that load applying more containment. So we've done over 15,000 horizontal impacts at the Solution Center, and I'd say probably 80 80 % of those are focused on stability testing. And then we've done like 5,000 hours of vibration testing, whether that's steel spring or air ride profiles, and then also some rail transportation. So it's also understanding our customers' distribution environment as well. So working with them, determining where it's going from the manufacturing facility and how many touch points that load's going to... going to see and what types of impacts it's going to see. It's really impressive how efficient you all are too. Cause when I'm there in these marketing meetings or whatever sales meetings at the facility there in Charlotte, I'll notice once the machine stops, you're all out there pulling off the pallet, putting on something new immediately. And it's just the use of those machines is just constant and it's really impressive. Kyle, we've kind of talked about an overview of things. Can you talk us through maybe a project that you worked on recently or in the past that was really impactful that you felt, man, we made a really big change there and that felt good. Yeah, I mean, think the biggest thing and Jake hit on it, you know, the ability for folks to walk in the door and feel like they're in a very dire spot where the customers are complaining, the loads are falling apart and they've tried everything. And for us to be able to, you know, one of the things that's unique is we have a ton of equipment here where we can, we have an automatic full speed wrapper that we can wrap. in existing conditions versus proposed conditions. And so we can actually create the same level of damage that they're used to getting photos in their email from the back of a truck. And so when we do that first and we show them this routine is going to provoke this to happen, now all of sudden when we start to implement solutions and more optimized state, it becomes really evident that the improvement has been made. And in some cases, it's a material reduction that does it. so without getting into too many specifics, I would say we've had customers recently that are in the shrink bundling space. And shrink bundling film is a tricky one because they use slip additive to machine well through the bundler itself. Well, when we see that on the backend and stack load configuration, you have just such low coefficient environment that it... slides, it shears, it fails pretty miserably. And so, you know, the combination of having a shrink bundler on the floor where we can actually put a lower slip modified film, we can then stack that on a pallet, we can wrap it to an optimized state and right next to the one that crashes, we have one that holds true and stays as perfectly upright as you can. Those are the ones that are really exciting for us because It shows sort of a deep knowledge of what the dynamics of unit loads are. And then for the years that we've been doing it, we can get really granular on specific parts and address them very quickly and how so to your point of efficiency in one to three days, we can usually hash out a problem and find a solution that we can roll out. It's awesome to watch. It's so exciting to be like a, a part of it. Like, look at this. The light bulb goes off, you we've seen that too. Right. Right. Lots of that, but it's, it's worth it. You got to break some eggs to make an omelet. Right. So Jake, let's talk about some trends in the, packaging industry that you're seeing, maybe some, some things that customers are interested in. and then. how EPR is going to affect packaging moving forward. then Kyle, I'll ask you the same question, so get ready. Yes, I think the biggest trend that we'll be seeing related to stretch film is definitely going to be post-consumer recycle stretch film. So there's a lot of options out there in the marketplace, different PCR percentages, but I think the trend will be working with our customers to choose the right amount of PCR and make sure with our equipment knowledge that it can still run efficiently at high pre-stretch levels. So Atlantic as a company invested a couple of years ago in a Remo recycling equipment where we're receiving bales of stretch film and turning that into post-consumer recycle resin and working with our stretch suppliers or manufacturers to then put that into our high-performance films. So we've done a great job as a company down-gaging, optimizing. with 100 % virgin plastic, but now I think that next step is once they're optimized, starting to introduce the post-consumer recycle content. And EPR is obviously a big factor in that to help our customers achieve their goals of reducing their virgin plastic usage. And I think on the flexible packaging space, we'll see similar trends with shrink film, obviously mailer applications and EECOM. either changing that to PCR or paper-based alternatives. So EPR is pushing a lot of these changes. It's exciting to see the scientific results of this work coming to fruition. And we're actually dialing down to the exact percentage of what works and what's efficient with PCR content and stretch film. I learned that from you and Kyle in the last tour I took with you. You tried higher percentages and it didn't perform. You tried lower percentages and it was okay, but we found the exact sweet spot and that's So uh nice work there. I think that's going to be really important in the future as we move forward to the highest level of PCR possible for everything. Kyle, your turn, sir. Yeah, Cory, I spent a large majority at this point in my career in the fiber space. You know, when I started 15 years ago, paper was boring. was old school. You know, what are you going to do with paper? And in today's world where brands and manufacturers are trying to move towards more readily curbside recyclable options for consumers, it's our job as packaging engineers to make fiber functional. And as it sits on its own, it's not very functional. So we do a ton of experimentation with different coding technologies, whether they're in the recyclable or compostable realm. And, you know, we start like everybody else where we're doing drawdowns and we're doing basic, you know, testing on A4 size sheets. But where we really start to differentiate ourselves in that space is in the solution center. When we can take. uh a sheet that's been coated and take it to one of our facilities and apply that coating to a roll, bring that coated roll into the solution center and put it on a flow wrapper and actually start to dial in machine settings, pressure, time, temperature, understanding seal consistency. You know, that is a huge advantage for our customers to ultimately be able to have some of that, you know, proverbial windshield time with this new material. And then beyond that, we can pack cases, we can stack on pallets and we can put on the vibration table and through impacts and run it through the supply chain sequence because we're seeing a ton of failures in the field where everything looks good. You may even get it to run on the machine, but then as soon as it's under load and in the stress of the dynamics related to transit, you get stress cracks, get seal failures. And so our ability to input a technology apply it at our current burning facilities, bring it into the solution center, use it in application and then test it through supply chain. There's not many folks on the planet earth that have those capabilities all in house. And so we can be a really strong enabler in making sure those technologies, you know, get the spotlight they deserve and then ultimately have an opportunity to scale like they should. And, you know, that's where I see the world continuing to go. is identifying opportunities and it may not be the primary wrapper. It may be a tertiary pack. It may be something to bundle products. This low hanging fruit is often the best place to start. Lower risk and still equal reward. And so for us to be able to kind of usher customers through that terrifying ordeal of trying to spec in a fiber solution. uh And if we can build comfort in that along the way, I think we can be a provocateur towards a lot of big changes that have a major impact on planet earth, not just Atlantic or our customers' business. Right. It can be scary. It is scary for people to change. You know, we've been doing this this way for 20 years. Why would we change? well, here's 10 reasons. And here's we're going to test it for you. And we're going to show you actual product, put your product in our packaging and show you that it works. And so that feels good to be able to actually show the results and ship the product back to the customer and say, what if we tried it this way that we've tested it? It works well said. So anything we missed guys, Jake or Kyle? Yeah. Well, I think to build on to that, one of the things I'm most proud of at the Solution Center is the way that our team has been able to facilitate the testing in a way that is non-biased. We're sales organization and we want to ultimately sell a lot of these materials, but there is not a day that we are going to fake it in the Solution Center. it is not in any way valuable to us. And so one of the more difficult things we've had to learn how to navigate is how do we, how do we be a technical resource within a sales organization and not try to stack the deck? And, you know, it is so critical for us that we continue to maintain that integrity and iterate and iterate and iterate before we just call it close enough. You know, I think that that, that sort of, you know, genuineness and that sort of dedication to the technical side of things is really what's going to continue to push us forward into sort of this new frontier of packaging. Yeah. When you go to a corrugated supplier, you're going to get a corrugated solution. When you go to a packaging partner like Atlantic, like us, you're going to get the right solution for you. And I think that's the differentiator and that's what people need to realize, sets us apart from everyone else. Like you said, we're material agnostic. We're going to come to you with the right solution that we think will, will, you know, solve your problems. Jake, anything else you want to tell us? Yeah, I would just add that it's ultimately just choosing what's right for our customer and what's right for the environment as well. whether that's choosing the right stretch film and down gauging, or sometimes we've had to add high CUF tier sheets or add additional revolutions where that might not ultimately be what's view it as more sustainable because we're adding materials, but inherently we're making that load more stable. We're preventing break, damage and loss. And ultimately the most unsustainable thing you can do is have load failures get into a customer and that needs to be reworked. then it's being shipped again and processed again. it's determining what's right for the customer, but also what's best for the environment as well. Thank you both for your time, for your wisdom, for all the things that you're doing to make packaging more sustainable for all of our customers. Keep up the great work. We appreciate you. Thanks, Cory.