Lt. Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul along with other officials from New York State, Monroe County and local jurisdictions joined ProAmpac CEO Greg Tucker to address the start of construction of the company’s Collaboration & Innovation Center.
The multi-million-dollar investment will expand ProAmpac’s existing facility to house what will become the company’s international hub for packaging design and development.
ProAmpac, which celebrated its fifth anniversary last month, ranks as the second-largest North American packaging company based on flexible packaging revenue and is No. 1 in flexible packaging innovation, No. 1 for its broad offering of flexible materials, and No. 1 in sustainable packaging options, according to Tucker.
“Innovation is the key factor in making flexible packaging the fastest-growing segment of the expanding global packaging industry, which is forecast to exceed $1 trillion by the end of next year,” Tucker said.
The Town of Ogden, Monroe County, Greater Rochester Enterprise, Rochester Gas & Electric, the New York Power Authority, and New York’s Empire State Development Group and its Excelsior Jobs Program are providing a capital grant of up to $1.35 million and a $1 million tax credit over 10 years to ProAmpac.
When the CIC opens in the spring of 2021, it will be a center for development, prototyping, and rapid evaluation of new packaging, as well as training and state-of-the-art collaboration space to host customer ideation sessions.
“The benefit of having all of our application testing, prototyping and short-run pouch production under one roof is that a customer can arrive with a packaging design issue and leave with printed, prototype samples,” Tucker said. “Our new facility will compress the design timeline significantly.”
The nearly $8-million center will create 40 new jobs and add 25,000 square feet to the company’s manufacturing facility at 2605 Manitou Road in the Town of Ogden, N.Y. near Rochester.
The existing pouch manufacturing facility has both ISO class 4 and ISO class 7 clean-room certifications and serves the agricultural chemical, personal care, medical and pharmaceutical markets offering low to medium volume production of flexible packaging, including Child Resistant Reclosable Easy Open (CRREO) pouches.