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FLEXIBLE PACKACING
ePac’s Toronto general manager Hila Frish (left) and Vancouver general manager George Boustani checking out the finished print quality of a stand-up pouch processed on the wide-web HP Indigo 2000 digital printing press.
THE DIGITAL EDGE Pioneering wide-web digital printing technology provides a powerful growth platform for enterprising flexible packaging supplier shaking up the industry’s outdated status quo By George Guidoni, Editor Photos By Naomi Hiltz
CANADIANPACKAGING.COM
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rom cheers to sneers, flexible packaging is a topic that tends to provoke a wide gamut of reactions among Canadian consumers, who seem to enjoy all the convenience benefits offered by plastic film-based bags and pouches while at the same time bemoaning the allegedly oversized excessive environmental footprint of the landfill-bound waste they leave behind. But as odd as this divergence of views may seem, there is no doubt that flexible packaging is not only not going anywhere, but is in fact reasserting its role as a safe, convenient and economical option for countless entrepreneurs and business start-ups across North America to bring their new products to consumers in a timely manner—be it through online de-
livery or on the traditional store-shelf. And thanks to companies like ePac Flexible Packaging, they can do so at a fraction of a cost of what the more established CPG (consumer packaged goods) brands spend on their packaging materials and graphics. Founded in 2015, Austin, Tex.-headquartered ePac is a thriving and digitally-savvy enterprise specializing in providing small and medium-sized brands with customized, short-run quantities of many different types and sizes of pre-cut and rollstock bags and pouches printed exclusively on the pioneering digital printing press technology developed by the HP Indigo division of global technologies giant HP, Inc. According to the company’s co-founders Jack Knott, Carl Joachim and Virag Patel, the idea for an all-digital-based September 2021 · CANADIANPACKAGING
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