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From commercial to packaging

Moving from commercial work to packaging work is the trend these days for commercial printers in search of another aspect of printing to enter. When Menasha acquired a commercial printing operation in Neenah (Wis), commercial printing was a great business, but it started to change as the market started to shrink. "We saw that in the early 2000s, and we had a couple of customers that we were doing some folding carton work for. As we began to look at the demographics of how things would change, we discovered we needed to create a shift in this business," reports Waite. "We made a shift toward folding carton and away from commercial work. It wasn't just a wholesale shift. We had some very good commercial printing customers we retained to help us transition from point A to point B." Today, the Folding Carton Group does 90 percent packaging and 10 percent residual commercial printing, according to Waite.