Apprehensive Optimism

Battle strategies

While folding carton converters can't necessarily combat the pressure from plastics directly, they can do a better job of promoting their substrate. Many millions of dollars were spent by the plastics market last year in self-promotion and marketing, Markens said. The paperboard market spent only a few hundred thousand dollars on similar efforts. "We have to do a better job of promoting ourself, especially with younger people. We need to do more, need to have more of a concerted effort to try to get students at design schools to look at paperboard," he said.