Sutherland Packaging Adds Capacity & Streamlines Workflow with New Warehousing Facility in Newton, NJ

In addition to a significant increase in overall storage space, the new facility will help the company improve its production workflow and expand logistics capabilities, including loading and shipping.

For Sutherland Packaging, the new space provides across-the-board versatility whose full value requires a background in its business model. The company's mainstay is an innovative form of direct printing technique that removes the need for a lithographic label to be applied over corrugated substrates, effectively replacing litho dollars with just a few cents of ink. Ideal for the retail consumer products market and club store displays, this advanced 5-color technology saves on both material costs and shipping times. The ability to forgo label printing also allows customers to quickly recoup their initial short-term investment in the direct print process.

First and foremost, the new space provides welcome additional storage, whose impact will be immediately felt in situations where, for example, customer product cannot be stacked due to enhanced specifications. The extra elbow room also allows Sutherland Packaging to produce full runs of phased product orders that, until now, have typically been performed on an as-needed basis. The resulting uptick in printing equipment availability will create valuable opportunities for the types of last-minute, tight-turnaround orders typical in the food display industry that Sutherland serves.

"The new storage facility lets our engineers run orders more completely at the outset of a project, rather than piecemeal over an extended period per customer needs," said Paul Yost, CEO of Sutherland Packaging. "As a result, our production facility spends less time in changeovers and more time actually printing."

The warehouse also significantly diminishes delays and disruptions to Sutherland Packaging's day-to-day workflow. It does so simply by being a separate entity: Products need no longer pass through Sutherland's shipping area en route to its finishing department, alleviating potential logistics logjams.

According to Mr. Yost, in the future the new facility also may be utilized to isolate, protect and secure assembly and pack-out projects.