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Board ConvertingServing the North American Corrugated and Folding Carton Industries for 35 years

October 14, 2019 VOL. 35, NO. 41

Akers Packaging Doubles DownOn Speed, Expansion & GrowthBY LEN PRAZYCH

It’s an unlikely box maker who hasn’t cited “great customer service” as one of the primary reasons for its long-term success. Indeed, get-ting the all-important customer what they need, when they want it, at a fair price, and of course, “just in time,” are the time-honored principles upon which Middletown, Ohio based Akers Packaging Service Group

continues to thrive as a third-generation independent box maker, one of the largest in the Midwest U.S.

William C. Akers “Bill” founded the company in 1963 with $30,000 of capital, 10 employees and a 20,000-square-foot plant about an hour north of Cincinnati. According to a brief history posted on its web site, the response to any reasonable request was “the answer is yes,” Akers wanted to offer his customers quick order turnaround, same or next day delivery and no minimum order quantity; he was in the “Just In Time” business before the term “JIT” was ever coined.

Customers responded by buying more boxes, and Akers responded by investing and expanding. in a first corrugator in 1965 and second one in 1995 by adding a 70-inch Agnati corrugator, and bringing his sons, Jim and Bill Akers II, into the family business. Growth “happened” again in 2013, when the company added an additional 150,000-square-

Akers Packaging had also been growing outside of its Middletown environs: the com-pany has either acquired or started at least 13 paper and packaging related businesses and today it and its affiliates operate 11 facilities in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and West Virginia under the names Akers Packaging Solutions, Tecumseh Packaging Solutions, Webster West Packaging, Hoosier Contain-er, Michiana Corrugated Products, Spectrum Packaging and Blue Box Corrugated.

The company continues to look for growth through acquisition and expansion through-out the Midwest. The third generation is firmly in place with Bill’s grandsons Andrew Akers and Mike Akey in the roles of Managing Di-rector/Sales Manager and President, respec-tively. High-Speed Converting

Akers Packaging’s desire to become an even faster and more efficient supplier of quality boxes to its ever-growing stable of customers came in June of 2016, when the company acquired an Isowa Ibis 50-inch, 4-color, flexo folder gluer.

“We were looking for quick set up times and we liked the fact that each print section was essentially its own machine; you can set up and wash up each print section inde-pendently,” says Brent Dixon, Plant Manager of Akers’ Middletown operation. “We heard from others in the industry that Isowa made a great machine, so we visited another plant that owned one. We liked what we saw and purchased the Ibis top-print machine with a diecut section on it. Kevin Erbe and his group from Isowa were great to work with and they accommodated us with what I believe was their first turn-key U.S. installation for any cus-tomer.”

“We run the machine like this: Each ‘down’ is a different order for us. We might have black on all four downs and because we get such great set-up times, each down is consid-ered its own separate order. Right now, on the

Plant Manager Brent Dixon, left, and Andrew Akers, Managing Director and Sales Manager, at Middletown, Ohio based Akers Packaging, one of 13 pack-aging businesses under the Akers banner throughout the Midwest.

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feet to accommodate a new 98-inch Fosber full-line corrugator.

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day shift we’re averaging three-minute set up times. The most we’ve run is 41 orders in seven hours and 20 min-utes, and that includes 40 minutes at the end of the shift to do a clean-up, which Isowa recommends doing to keep the machine running its best.”

Akers Packaging was so pleased with the efficiency, print quality and speed – 250 kicks per minute – of the Ibis, that it looked to Isowa’s 36-inch, 4-color Falcon to run its smaller box business. Akers had been running its small-er boxes on a 37.5-inch 2-color Ward with a die cut section, but the set-up times and efficiencies were so much better on the Falcon that the decision to invest again with Isowa was a “no-brainer.” Installed in October of 2017, the new Is-owa Falcon had a die cut section and like the Ibis, it’s fast: 350 kicks per minute.

“The Falcon runs just like the Ibis and it fits right into our mix,” says Dixon. “And we’re running both at max speeds on all three shifts.”

Dixon says that there’s only rare instances when the speed of the machines may be impacted and it’s usually when they’re run at the very high end of the range. Speed also may be affected if doublewall is running and bundles are 15 instead of 25. Dixon estimates Akers can run 90 percent of its business on the Falcon at its top speed of 350 kicks per minute.

Since no human is fast enough to feed Isowa “birds” manually, Alliance prefeeders are on both machines. In fact, every prefeeder and load former in Akers’ plant is an Alliance product. The Falcon is equipped with a high-speed, dual-stage top feeder and a semi-robotic three-stage load former, which cuts down the cycle time by about 12 seconds. “This doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re running 350 a minute, the seconds add up,” says Dixon.Maintenance And Training

Dixon emphasizes the importance of maintaining the Isowa flexo folder gluers so they operate at maximum effi-ciency. Isowa’s North American-based maintenance crews visit once a quarter to perform a 4-day PM on both ma-chines at the same time.

“They’ll come in on a Friday, watch production, and go through the machine to thoroughly understand what issues we may be having,” explains Dixon. “Saturday and Sunday are usually 12-hour days with the Akers mainte-nance staff. Isowa continues PMs with the belts, print downs, counter ejectors and everything else they need to go through. They’ll change out what they need to change out and they’ll give us a ‘hit list’ of items we may need to do after they leave. On Monday, they’ll do some fine tuning on the machines while we’re running production to make sure that everything they worked on the past two days is working well.”

Isowa offers its PM program at no cost for one year af-ter the purchase of a machine. After a year, there is a fee for the service, which according to Dixon, is well worth the investment. “We saw a huge benefit with Fosber’s quarter-ly maintenance program on our corrugator, so we thought we’d do it with our Isowas and we’ve been very satisfied.”

Isowa’s training teams were also helpful. With the in-stallation of the Ibis, Isowa representatives came to the plant and did both classroom training and hands-on train-ing with Akers’ machine operators.

“When we installed the Falcon, we took the crews we were going to have working on it and had them train on the Ibis so they could get accustomed to the screens and how the machine worked,” says Dixon. “We used Isowa’s training again but the learning curve was shorter because the operators were already familiar with the Ibis.”

One of two Isowa flexo folder gluers Akers Packaging pur-chased to satisfy its desire to become an even faster and more efficient supplier of high quality boxes.

Beyond “Jurassic Park”In addition to the Ibis and the Falcon, the aforemen-

tioned 37.5 inch 2-color Ward and an Alliance J&L Mark 5 Specialty folder gluer represent the lion’s share of the company’s flexo output. Akers also runs three 66-inch rotary diecutters: two Hycorrs and a Ward. The company also owns a variety of older letterpresses, stitchers, glu-ers, tapers, band saws and slitters in an area of the origi-nal footprint of the plant Dixon refers to as “Jurassic Park.” “Some customers still do require stitching and it is not a large part of our business but it’s a profitable one,” he says.

Akers Packaging runs three shifts and the Isowa flexo folder gluers run on all three. Akers’ other converting equipment runs two shifts and “Jurassic Park” is only open during the day. The Fosber 98-inch corrugator runs A-, B- and C-flute on three shifts, 24/5, and is responsible for “a large amount of sheet business,” according to Dixon: about 20 percent is out the door to sister locations and strategic partners, while the majority of the rest is con-sumed in-house by the insatiable Isowas. HarperLove pro-vides starch resins and flexo adhesives.

Akers Packaging is looking to put a DPi Digital Printer on its Fosber corrugator so it can print on double-face lin-er at high speeds before it goes to the triple stack, which would save a set-up on the converting side. DPi has been

working with Fosber to ensure the installation would be successful and when it is installed in the future, Akers would be the first in the area to have it.

From its Middletown plant, Akers Packaging ships an average of 3.6 million square-feet (about 40 truckloads) per day – about 70-80-million square-feet per month – which is transported through the 400,000-square-foot fa-cility via fully automated “smart-kart” C&M Conveyors. A Kiwi system works with C&M’s CIMS software to identify the location of every order in the plant.

Akers 155 employees include a sales force of twelve who sell to customers in the food & beverage, automotive aftermarket, pharmaceutical, and primary food packaging segments, mostly within a 150-mile radius of Middletown.Where To Grow From Here?

With Akers Packaging’s new machine additions, using the fastest and most efficient machines in the industry, there still is, according to Brent Dixon, plenty of business to be secured in the booming Midwest.

The company has purchased two HG2 1632 66-inch by 126-inch Apstar diecutters from Haire Group, one for its Chicago location and one for its Middletown location. The Middletown machine will be equipped with a full slotter section and full die cut section, and have 2-color inside, 4-color outside print capabilities with two JB Machinery dryers. It will have an AG Stacker with a prefeeder, bundle

Alliance prefeeders are in front of both Isowa flexo folder glu-ers and Alliance prefeeders, load formers and bundle breakers are on virtually every converting machine in the plant.

A view from the bridge of the Isowa Falcon flexo folder gluer.

The Isowa Ibis 50-inch, 4-color flexo folder gluer runs at a top speed of 250 kicks per minute, and it runs at that speed for the majority of all three shifts at Akers Packaging.

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breaker and load former, all by Alliance, of course. The ma-chine will be delivered in mid-November and will be run-ning by December.

“We believe that the retail side of the business is going to more internal print and we’ll be able to convert our cur-rent three diecutters into one machine,” says Dixon. “That may take some time, but we have high expectations. And if the Apstar is as successful as we think it will be, we may purchase another.”

Given the success Akers Packaging is enjoying with its Isowa high-speed flexo folder gluers, it should come as no major surprise that the company is also considering yet a third machine, another Falcon, a new model Isowa is work-ing on.

“We’re looking to install a Falcon that can get down to a smaller box size, not quite a mini, which is an aspect of our business we currently run die cut on our J&L,” says Dixon. “If we can run that business one-pass on a new Falcon, it would save us time and save our customers money. When Isowa builds the machine to the dimensions we need – and we think they will – we will likely be installing it.”

The possibility of having three Isowas and two Apstars, running three shifts at top speeds? In the world of corru-gated converting, this would be ground-breaking. Is there a limit to which Akers Packaging Service Group will “push the envelope” of packaging excellence?

Apparently not.

The new DPi digital printer will be installed before liner is transported to the triple stack.

Board is transported through Akers Packaging 400,000-square-foot facility via fully automated C&M conveyors.