MUST Stretch Film System, Reducing Plastic and Saving Money with Ric Lee at Atlantic Packaging

In this episode, Cory Connors sits down with Ric Lee of Atlantic Packaging to discuss one of the most impactful sustainability programs in the packaging industry today: MUST. Ric shares his 30-year journey through the packaging and equipment world and explains how his experience led to the development and expansion of MUST, a first-of-its-kind stretch film management system. The conversation highlights a major announcement around the scale, impact, and validation of MUST, including its role in dramatically reducing plastic use, cutting customer costs, and delivering long-term, financially sustainable environmental benefits. Ric explains how the program evolved from a simple monitoring concept into a fully managed system that drives real-world results across thousands of facilities. Over the past decade, MUST has helped remove 247 million pounds of plastic from the supply chain while saving customers over $80 million, proving that sustainability can succeed when it delivers both environmental and economic value.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Ric Lee’s background and career in stretch film and packaging equipment
• Challenges with traditional stretch film equipment ROI and real-world performance
• The origins of the MUST system through collaboration with Coca-Cola
• How MUST differs from basic stretch wrapper monitoring solutions
• Managing stretch film standards through data, accountability, and partnership
• Environmental impact of MUST, including plastic reduction at scale
• Customer cost savings and damage reduction benefits
• Real-world success stories with Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, and Hill’s Pet Nutrition
• Integration of PCR stretch film into MUST programs
• Eligibility requirements for MUST and automatic stretch wrapping systems
• The future of MUST, including AI and expanded capabilities

Resources Mentioned:

• Atlantic Packaging
• MUST Stretch Film System
• Atlantic Packaging Solutions Center
• WolfTec Stretch Wrapping Equipment

Contact:

Listeners interested in learning more about MUST or scheduling a facility evaluation can reach out to Ric Lee via email at ricl@atlanticpkg.com, through the Atlantic Packaging website, or on LinkedIn.

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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 Ric Lee from Atlantic Packaging. Ric is the stretch sales and marketing director, and we discussed an incredible program we offer called MUST. That is reducing plastic usage by over 247 million pounds over its lifetime and saving our customers millions of dollars as well. I'd also like to thank our sponsors, 3M and Specright. We couldn't do this show without them. Welcome to Sustainable Packaging. I'm so excited today to talk about a program at Atlantic Packaging that we couldn't be prouder of. It's an incredible platform. It's an incredible service that we provide to our customers. We've got the president of that program, Mr. Ric Lee, Stretch Sales and Marketing Director, Atlantic Packaging, MUST. Welcome, sir. Hey, it's good to be here, Cory. Really appreciate you making time for this. We've been working together for eight months now or so and really impressed with what you do and what the program does at There It Must. But let's talk about you a little bit before we get too far into the podcast. Can you tell us about your background and how you got to here at Atlantic? Yeah, I've been in packaging for about 30 years. I know I don't look like it. It looks like it's been longer than that. The majority of the time of my time in packaging has really been spent on the equipment side. So I was with Landtech that basically invented stretch film back in the 70s. I led their sales and marketing teams. I was there for about 12 years. learned an incredible amount about equipment and perhaps the process of stretch film, how it works. Worked with a lot of really great people there. I left there, I spent about five years as a president of RoboPack, which was their biggest competitor globally. RoboPack is actually a little bit bigger globally than Lantek and Lantek's pretty dominant here in the US. So spent quite a bit of time really understanding the applications of stretch film and those kind of things. it's, I mean, a lot of the things that drove me to talk to Atlantic were some of the frustrations that came out of the way that customers looked at stretch film equipment. So after doing that there for 17 years, a lot of times when people are looking at buying equipment, you've got to build a return on investment. I never could figure out why, as part of that return on investment, customers would not let me include stretch film savings. sometimes it takes a long time to learn hard lessons, but the reality is that the customer was right. And what they were seeing is that even if you put a new stretch wrap system in, and it's supposed to get 250 % pre-stretched and it's supposed to be able to do a certain level of containment, which is necessary to ship a load. When you put it into the real world, it doesn't always deliver what it was designed to do. that was really frustrating. I mean, if you think about, I've always really felt like it was my responsibility, whatever side of that equation I was on to reduce the usage of plastic. It's always been a passion of mine for 30 years. so I just couldn't get people to use my equipment the right way. so we couldn't get the credit for it. And because of that, the world wasn't reducing stretch from usage in the way that they should, even when they are investing in equipment. So it always ties back into being able to manage the whole process. And so that's kind of my background. That's really what brought me to Atlantic. Yeah. Well, that's really impressive. I didn't know you'd been with the equipment manufacturers for that long. Those machines are incredible and they're such a great part of what we do with, you know, with WolfTek and those kinds of brands and those partnerships are so critical to this MUST system. But I was hoping you could tell the audience what is MUST and how does it work? It's funny. It's, again, with my background, at you, I came to Atlantic for the opportunity to really try to help develop that program. And it's it was a monitoring system when I got here. So we could slap a monitor on your stretch wrapper and help you hold that standard. And I couldn't figure out why people weren't standing in line. at the door of every Atlantic location in the country begging to buy this thing. So I probably spent the first couple of years, maybe three years at Atlantic really understanding why this wasn't being accepted by customers at the level I thought it should be. So spent a lot of time with Kyle Pichel who now runs our solution center and Mackie Bryant, who we recently promoted to a national account team. in the field digging into how customers use it and how they perceive it. you know, what we, what we really found was that what people are looking for is a, is a system, a stretch management system to help them get the most out of that, that whole product, that whole, the whole system, the whole, be able to use their stretch wrap wrapper correctly. And so that's kind of really the breakthrough. You know, we, Atlantic had always really delivered an effective stretch film management system, but they called it a monitor. You know, so that was pretty much in my mind, that was was pretty much a breakthrough. when the thing that makes it different than just being a monitor, there's other people that can put a monitor on your stretch on your stretch wrapper. But what we found was that we were sending these emails to people like Coke. And we'll talk about how we develop must in a minute. And that was in conjunction with Coke. And it was in these just massive amounts of information and expecting them to act on it. All we were doing is filling their emails up and they're so busy. The whole reason that stretch wrappers aren't used correctly is because they've got too many other things to do. And it's the very last piece of equipment in the back of a plant. So what we realized is we're going to have to help them and we're going to have to take responsibility. for holding that standard at the same level that they do. So really what MEST is, it's a way to set and hold the correct standard for stretch wrapping all your lugs. And by doing that, what we've been able to do, last year in 2025, we took 41 million pounds of plastic out of the environment. And then over the last 10 years, it's 247 million pounds. Now, the thing that makes that so impressive. We believe it's the most sustainable program in all packaging. I don't know that anybody else has run a program that took 41 million pounds of plastic out. The other thing that I think makes it impressive is not just the impact to the environment, it's that our customers saved over $80 million. So one of the things that I've always been impressed with by the RED program that Bono runs is he it's a sustainable program. Everybody involved in it made money and they're still saving people from AIDS in Africa because it's a sustainable program. so, you know, one of the things that the West Carter, our president talks about is that we've got to build programs that can that can last a lifetime. And that's kind of what this is. So it's easy to convince someone to participate in a program that helps them reduce their usage, especially when it helps them save money. It's sustainable sustainability. I like that. Sustainable sustainability. That's exactly right. And it has to make sense on your green bottom line and on your regular bottom line too. That's so important. Well, let's talk about the inventor of it and how it came to be. I think people will understand that a little bit more as we go into that. So about 20 years ago, Coca-Cola came to Atlantic and they said, know, at the time we sold a lot of uh Wolf Tech equipment to Coke, still do. And we did a lot of service work for Coke on that equipment. And so some of the leadership at Coke came to and met with Rusty Carter, our CEO, and said, you know, when your techs are in our plant, we really do well. We use less film, our loads are more stable, our productivity improves, and everything's great. And that lasts for, I don't know, a couple months, sometimes a couple weeks, and sometimes about an hour and a half. And so we kind of like you guys to solve that problem for us. And we think maybe some kind of a monitor might work. And one of the things that I've learned since I've been here is we're not very good at saying no, especially to somebody like Coke. We're not very good at saying no. Yes, we are. So Rusty Carter signed up for coming up with an Internet of Things solution before there was anything such as an Internet of Things solution. So we have We still have, Bruce Lauder still works for us today. Man, after this one, I kind of wonder why. uh But Bruce is an engineer, a tech for us, is probably the, one of the most intelligent people I've ever met in my life. And he's just a blast to work with. So Rusty handed the project over to Bruce and he worked with. I think we had like two or three engineers from Coke. It's actually how we found Kyle Pischel. So Kyle Pischel actually helped. He was an intern at Coke and was involved in some of the initial rollouts with Bruce. And we just developed a way that we could put this monitoring system on a stretch wrapper and tell you exactly how many ounces of film that you use in every load. We could tell when somebody would change the containment force, is what holds the pallet. It squeezes the pallet that holds the load together. And the other thing that we thought was, yeah, yeah. The other thing that was critical is we felt like, and Coke felt like, that a lot of the problem was when something happened to the wrapper, like film breaks, that's when the operators would make all kinds of changes and that were not really going after the root cause. And so we also made the crazy decision to monitor film breaks. And those are the key things that we really watch and assign health scores and really address. And we found that if you take care of the little things, the big things take care of themselves. So if you make sure you're putting exactly the right amount of film on every pallet, you put every revolution where it's supposed to be. You train operators what to do when they run into something, and you try not to cause them headaches with film breaks, and then you can maintain that standard for a long time. And so because of that, we really developed this system where we help the customers manage that, and we help them do the root cause analysis, and then train them to be self-sufficient, and it works really, really well. uh But they don't react well to sending them emails and expecting to do something different. takes a lot more than that. It takes a partnership. And from that, I don't know that anyone else would have said yes to that. mean, even with my background, at the time, if somebody would have come to me when I would have been in Lantek at that point in time and asked me, I would have laughed. I mean, I'm not very good at saying no either. probably wouldn't. I would have tried. But I mean, think it's just a classic case of somebody really working hard to do the right thing. today that crazy idea, we monitored 80 million pallets last year. We monitored 220,000 loads per day. it just speaks mountains of the leadership of Rusty and and the intelligence of Bruce Lauder to, you know, the hard part is the invention. The hard part is saying yes and pulling that off. that's really how it got started. Well, and like you said, we have to commend Mr. Carter for taking that leap and saying, yeah, we're to work on this, even though it sounds far fetched, it sounds unfeasible. But it's truly come to fruition and there's monitoring systems, there's LIDAR, there's all these things on there that when our techs like Kyle talk and people talk about it and you talk about it, I'm just blown away by the system. And what I'm seeing on as a lowly salesperson in the company, I'm seeing this incredible effect at these huge corporations that are saying, wow, you can really do that? And I get alert on my phone if something happens and watching them realize what's possible is impressive. So well done. Well, I've always believed that if you could as a salesperson, you can be a sustaining resource for your customer and you're perceived that when you walk into the plant, you add value. And that really matters to you that you'll be very successful if we can help you do that with a customer. I a program like this really helps a salesperson have a level of confidence that they really can. There literally isn't a customer on the planet, and I've done this for 30 years, that effectively manages their stretch film program on their own. Nobody. mean, my wife tells me I should never say nobody, but in 30 years, I haven't found anybody. And we really can help customers, and it really feels good to be able to do that. Help customers, help the environment. you know, really help our employees and our company as well. It's truly one of those things that's a win-win-win for everybody. I totally agree. I'd like to hear your opinion or maybe you've heard some of our customers say, give some feedback about the system. You know, people like Coca-Cola and you know, these customers that have used it for a long time. Can you tell us some of those kind of hot takes from those customers? Sure. Sure, one of the things that we do, first of all, I'm a database person. And so one of the things that we do that we think has had another pretty big impact on customers is we started doing business reviews and reviewing this mountain of data that we have with our customers on a quarterly basis. And so I think if you talk to Coca-Cola, they they save us a lot of money. Our plants love them. Our machines run better. But it's the data that makes a difference. So every quarter, we review with each of the Coke bottlers, all of our customers, exactly what they're doing. So we're preparing for a big meeting with Coke coming up next week. And so this data is pretty fresh. We reduced, we have probably 90 some percent of of all the Coke business at this point in time on stretch film. We reduced their usage of stretch film by 24 % last year. We reduced the pounds of the film they used by about 26 and we managed over 20 million loads for them. The other thing that's interesting and I point, we hadn't talked about this with them for a while, but back in 2011, they had put together what their target containment force was for different loads. And we've just found since we've put the solution center in and done a lot of testing, and one of the things I love to hear about damage, because if we hear about damage, that means we can get better. That means our standard is not correct. And so we really watched that. since 2011, we've doubled the containment force on average on every single load that Coca-Cola ships. And that's really become the standard. We do a lot in the soft drink and beer industry. And those standards based on data that we've gotten from the Solutions Center and then based on the 80 million loads, I mean, the big data we have on us, we know it works. not only did we reduce their cost, we always start with eliminate damage. So I think if you talk to Coke, they'd be, those are the kinds of things you'd hear. One of the first really big quick rollouts we did was with Anhyzer Bush. a lot of theirs was driven by some of their plants having significant damage. um Customers don't like you sharing percentage of damage and damage reduction, but it was high. Well, we've reduced their damage very significantly and at the same time reduced their film usage by 37%. And that's pretty standard. It's pretty standard with what we do. the feedback from them was they were more excited about the damage savings than they were the cost savings. mean, you think about what it costs for a pallet of beer that tumbles over in the back of a truck. It's enormous. very expensive, very messy, very, yeah. And then they have to send another one and yeah, that's incredibly damaging to their brand because I'm sure those pictures go out amongst the community. We see those same kind of things across all different types of businesses. we have recently rolled out with a really big pet food company and we reduced their costs by well over 29%. And the really cool thing that it's one of the first customers outside of Coke that we've rolled out our PCR film. that location, not only did they reduce their costs by that much, their virgin plastic reduction was in the 50 % range. So, you know, it's really fun doing things that are kind of groundbreaking and, know, so now, of course, now we're hearing from their corporate people, their corporate sustainability people, hey, we need to publish some papers on this and... So we're working with the marketing team now on that particular case. It's Hill's Pet Food and we're working on some really cool video stuff for them. And there's a thousand stories like that. mean, that's the fun. That's why we're here. We do the right thing for the planet. We save people a lot of money. And man, this is fun. This is really fun. I, got to have Cody from Hills Pet on the podcast a few months ago and he was incredible. He was so excited about all these things we're working on together. but I don't want to get everybody too excited because this program isn't for everyone. It's not. so can we talk about what are the requirements for the customer? Meaning who's eligible for a must system? Any customer that uses an automatic conveyorized stretch wrapper. basically, if you are at that level of productivity, we've got a program that will work for them. it's, will we ever have a solution for the semi-automatic user? I don't know. Probably so. I hate to tell someone it's... This is the only right way to wrap a load and then not be able to do it. And we're looking at, I just had a meeting with Chip and Ram and Stuart, people that you're pretty familiar with, the guys that, they're really smart people in our program. Ram designed the new MUST and is uh the company AI expert. As you know, we're building a lot of AI into MUST now and other things in the company. And then Chip leads our equipment program. So we've been really thinking about Chip and I had ideas in our minds about how we could do some things around SIMIs. But at this point, we really aren't in a position that we can do that. I think in the next three to five years, we'll have a solution for anybody. think, you know, it's kind of we kind of feel an obligation to do that. But at this point, it's anybody with an automatic stretch wrap machine we can do this with. how many pallets a day is kind of that marker for movement to a fully automatic stretch wrapper? You know, we've kicked that around. you've invested, if you wrap enough loads that you've invested in automatic conveyor ice stretch wrapper, it's probably enough. It's the easiest way for us to tell ourselves, people, and our customers. And then what we would want to do is then go out and, as part of our process, we would always go into a plant, take a look at it, and evaluate. I mean, if it's not If it's not going to save you enough money, if it's not going to be worth your time, we'll tell you that. And there's other things we can do to help. But I think in those cases, that will get you qualified. That's great. I like that part a lot about working at Atlantic is we're here to help everyone, small and medium sized and massive companies. Like you mentioned, the several examples in a recent meeting, you kind of blew away everybody by saying we offer a guaranteed savings. And I would like to talk about that for, for, cause that was a surprise to me. And I thought, Whoa, Yeah. Again, because we're monitoring on a daily basis and we have a team of folks, you know, we have a team of 10 folks at this point in time that literally are assigned regions and they're responsible for the health scores and for those lines being up and running and training the people in those plants. The difference in our program is that Everybody else tries to win the cut and weigh battle. So they're going to come into your plant and they're going to put their roll of film on your equipment and they're going to run two loads or three loads if you're lucky. And if I could use less, as soon as they use less film, they tell you they can do that. And they ran out the door before, you know, the operator looks at him and, you know, shakes his head and goes back and turns all the settings back to where they were and all your savings go away. And so, yeah. So the difference in our program is if we tell you we're going to wrap your load with four and a half ounces of film, you will wrap every load with four and half ounces of film. And if you're not, we're going to send somebody in there to fix what's broken, whether it's the machine that's got a problem, a chain broke, or if it's just an operator was made a bad decision about the wrap set. because we do that, As an example, the largest Coca-Cola bottler in the country has 76 stretch wrappers that we monitor. Only four of them were more than half an ounce out of spec for all of 2025. There's no way that you can do that without having a team and having. And so because we know how much you're using, we'll guarantee a 15 % savings. We almost always deliver more than that. So we've been doing that since before I got here. And so I've been doing it for 10 years. We've never written a check. We never even had anyone ask us to write a check. we will. But it's just, it gives people the, if the $11.5 million testing facility doesn't make you feel comfortable when we determine what the rap cycle should be, then we'll give you guarantee. And we'll do that for. Anybody. It's incredibly impressive, Ric. And I just want to commend you and the team at Atlantic Packaging for all the work that you do and uh all the technical people in the background that invented this kind of thing and all of the on-site technicians and all the salespeople working with all of our great customers. So congratulations to you and the team there at Atlantic Packaging. How do people get in touch with you and get a salesperson out to their facility? The easiest way is to reach out to me on my email at ricl at atlanticpkg.com. You can go to our website, go to the MUST website, and there's ways that you can just put in your information, tell us what you want to talk about. Somebody from my team will give you a call, probably be me because I get excited about stuff like that. Or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thank you, Really appreciate this and keep up the great work. I've really enjoyed working with you and the team. Enjoy working with you Cory and this is, it's a blast. We have fun. Take care.