Atlantic Packaging is spending $10 million to open a new research, testing and shipping certification center in Charlotte, N.C.
The new location, called the Packaging Solution Center, “will establish a brand new model in the packaging industry, one with a science-based approach to eliminate the guesswork to create industry-wide shipping standards,” the company said.
The 80,000-square-foot facility will be available to customers starting Aug. 14 following a grand opening event.
“The real value in the Solution Center is that the customer can view multiple options from various manufacturers,” said Eric Farmer, vice president of e-commerce sales for Atlantic, in a statement.
The Wilmington, N.C.-based company, which provides equipment, materials, engineering and technical resources for both plastic and paper packaging, said the new facility is the first established outside of the academic field.
“The truly unique thing about the Atlantic Solution Center in Charlotte is the investment we've made in sophisticated packaging and unit load testing equipment,” President Wes Carter said in a statement. “If one of our customers is experiencing damage in transit, we can literally re-create that specific route in our center to see where and how their products are failing,”
With that knowledge, the company can the develop a solution, Carter said.
The new facility also has a packaging lab for testing flexible materials as well as packaging lines that will feature equipment automation.
Atlantic Packaging's equipment and materials business includes stretch wrap, shrink packaging, flexible packaging and strapping. The company's converting and printing business includes shrink sleeves and labels.
Atlantic Packaging traces its roots to 1946 when W. Horace Carter founded a weekly paper, The Tabor City Tribune, in North Carolina. It was six years later that newspaper received the Pulitzer Prize for Carter's editorials against the Ku Klux Klan, prejudice and violence. The business grew over time to eventually include packaging.
