BY ANDREW JOSEPH, FEATURES EDITOR

PLASTICS PullingPulling thethe StringsStrings Ontario bagmaker betting on a bright future for the Old World packaging mainstay

or the long-time global packaging industry A roll of pre-printed film is fed veteran Günther Huettlin, the best packag- through a Hettler Maschinen FK2000 machine ing ideas come with strings attached.And to produce drawstring for the U.S.-based F -napkins manufacturer Marcal Paper Mills. as far as the well-travelled founder and owner of Belleville, Ont.-based drawstring bags producer GH Günther Huettlin Manufacturing Inc. embraced GMP (Good is concerned, it’s just a matter of time before the Manufacturing Practices) protocol. North American packaging industry starts see- “We do a lot of contract packag- ing things his way. ing for femcare (feminine care) and “There are up to 20 million drawstring bags, beauty supplies, with P&G being made in various sizes and decorated with high- our main customer for contract tech print, being converted every year in our packaging,” Huettlin relates. Belleville plant already,” says Huettlin.“It is To keep the contract packaging strange to me that in the North American mar- side of its business growing, GH ket, the use of drawstring packaging is still min- Manufacturing has carried out imal, whereas over in extensive equipment installations at Europe, the drawstring the Belleville facility, including: package is a real phe- The reusable napkin bags • Optima Machinery Corporation’s semi-auto- . C

nomenon.” are made in four sizes—with matic Bagstar -sealing machine, which folds, seals N I G N Back in the year 2000, respective holding capacity of and trims excess plastic from the manually-loaded I R U T

Huettlin decided to use 180, 250, 400 and 1,000 indi- polyethylene bags of napkins; C A F U

his vast, 40-years-plus of vidual napkins—on the The MBB2 -sealer from Oshawa, Ont.-based N

• A M

experience in the print- recently-installed, fully-auto- Dependable Marking Systems Ltd., used for tap- H G F ing and packaging indus- matic FK2000 line supplied ing shut corrugated packed with bags coming O Y S E T

tries to launch the by German machinery man- off the Bagstar machine; R U O

Belleville operation as a ufacturer Hettler Two MPS 6110 ribbon bag-sealers from Toronto- C

• S O co-packer and third- Maschinen GmbH. based Emplex Systems Inc., which produce contin- T O H party manufacturer for In operation, this machine uous hermetic seals on the bags using etched Teflon P various packaged con- Upscale European beauty products currently using drawstring bags. unspools rolls of polyethylene bands; sumer goods compa- film and then splits and gus- • A fully-automatic, German-made Kallfass nies—most notably Procter & Gamble’s beauty- sets the before welding the cuff area, Universa 400 Standard shrinkwrapping machine, products business. where the strings are inserted and quickly knotted supplied by Montreal-based Doverco Inc., as well Along the way, the up-and-coming company devel- together, at speeds of up to oped a relatively rare in-house expertise in the draw- 90 bags per minute. string-bag packaging format, which Huettlin believes Huettlin points out that has a promising future in the virtually untapped the reclosable drawstring bag North American marketplace. facilitates very hygienic stor- age of the unused product, NICHE OPPORTUNITY and it easily lends itself to be “The drawstring bags could be a nice niche market in reused for various household North America,” Huettlin told Canadian Packaging chores, such as collecting on a recent visit to the 70,000-square-foot Belleville laundry. facility, which also houses a 40,000-square-foot ware- Employing 38 full-time house.“Definitely, the market is currently behind in workers, the Belleville facili- comparison to Europe, where ty—sitting on 36 acres of drawstring bags are popular for fenced-in private property— hygienic products such as cotton manufactures the drawstring balls and make-up pads ... and bags on a two-shift, five- they are being increasingly used in days-a-week schedule. the fresh baked-goods industry. Because the plant’s co-pack- “In , a country with ing business fluctuates wide- Belleville plant workers pack the Always brand of femcare products with MPS 6110 ribbon bag-sealers. a population of just over seven ly throughout the year,GH million, the two leading retailers Manufacturing often hires up to 60 additional tem- as the Carrera 500M flowwrapping machine from buy over three million drawstring Günther Huettlin, porary workers during peak production. Ilapak, Inc. bags per month for fresh in-store president, “Over the past five years, we gained much experi- GH Manufacturing. baked products,” states Huettlin, QUALITY OUTPUT ence in many contract packaging applications, includ- also the owner of a German-based company, just The plant’s logistics and distribution operations are ing DRPs (display-ready ), sample packaging, north of Munich, specializing in the manufacture of greatly enhanced with the solely-owned, on-site club-packs, shrinkwrapping, flowwrapping, repackag- polyethylene gloves inserted inside packages of hair- Canadian National rail connection, according to ing, labeling and product assembly,” sums up Huettlin, coloring solutions—annually producing up to 60 Huettlin, as well as a 50,000-square-foot secured con- adding he is now looking for a North American sup- million pairs. crete pad serving as a trailer parking lot. plier of high-quality printed film comparable in quali- “Needless to say, we hope that the market in North “Quality and efficiency are very important to GH ty, service and price to the company’s current, America can be strongly developed in several direc- Manufacturing,” asserts Huettlin.“Our facility and co- European-based supplier. ❏ tions,” says Huettlin,“offering consumers a convenient packing operation are regularly audited by P&G, and packaging solution.” on our last audit, in October of 2005, we scored 93 For more information on: One of GH Manufacturing’s major clients, per cent. GH Manufacturing Inc. 475 Elmwood Park, N.J.-based paper napkins producer “Our quality assurance system is very well-accepted Dependable Marking Systems Ltd. 476 Marcal Paper Mills, Inc., is reportedly a very satis- by most companies, and we believe it to be at least on Doverco Inc. 477 fied end-user of the so-called Draw and Store bags the same level as the ISO standards,” Huettlin says, Emplex Systems Inc. 478 made at the Belleville plant, featuring the convenient adding that the plant is also registered for full compli- Optima Machinery Corporation 479 drawstring resealing feature that helps consumers keep ance with the U.S.FDA (Food and Drug Ilapak, Inc. 480 their storage cabinets neat and tidy. Administration) guidelines and the widely-

40 CANADIAN PACKAGING, FEBRUARY, 2006