Page 7 - Packaging News Magazine Jan-Feb 2019

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January-February 2019 www.packagingnews.com.au
NEWS
Impact celebrates
60 years in Australia
Top execs to
exit Pro-Pac
GRANT Harrod will step down as CEO of Pro-Pac Packaging just a year and a half into the top job, and John Cerini, former CEO of Integrated Packaging Group, which Pro-Pac bought in 2017 for $177m, is also quit- ting as a full-time executive.
Pro-Pac last FY suffered a $5.13m loss despite climb- ing revenues, blaming the drought as well as increased costs of raw materials. At the AGM in November 2018, Harrod acknowledged the current year’s earnings have not met expectations.
He said the company’s strategy is to diversify to re- duce concentration risk on volatile markets like agri- culture and raw material commodities such as resin. Harrod noted that Pro- Pac’s recent acquisition of Perfection Packaging and Polypak supported the group’s shift in focus to providing printing and con- verting capabilities further
up the cus- tomer’s val- ue chain to meet prima- ry packag- ing needs. ■
Grant Harrod: Stepping down.
TUBE maker Impact Interna- tional has commemorated its 60th anniversary in business, which the company attri- butes to its flexibility and customer service.
The celebration raised a company record of $1,370 for the Exodus Foundation Christ- mas appeal, says Aleks Lajovic, Impact’s managing director. “We had about 130 guests in at- tendance, including our state MP, Hugh McDermott. It was great to celebrate surviving 60 years of manufacturing in Aus- tralia,” he said.
Founded in 1958 by a Slove- nian refugee to manufacture tubes for Colgate, Impact has occupied the same Smithfield site for the company’s entire history. “Today, we employ about 95 people in Australia and manufacture tubes for some of Australia’s and New Zealand’s leading brands. Our production site operates 24 hours a day, five days a week,” said Lajovic.
According to Lajovic, adapt- ability has been a key factor in Impact’s longevity. “Over the years, we have changed our product offering to suit the
Toasting six decades of success: (l-r) Lucy Gauci, Hugh McDermott MP, Dimitri Lajovic, Aleks Lajovic, Clare Lajovic, and Adam Siwek.
needs of our customers. We’ve invested in new equipment and been quite innovative in how our tubes are manufactured – not just in terms of quality and appearance, but the [impact on the] environment.
“We have tried to add value to our customers’ stories,” he said. Lajovic hails Impact’s Project
Craig tube as a highlight of 2018 for the company. “It contains plastic derived from sugarcane, a renewable resource; it uses en- ergy from our own solar farm; it’s protected by our internation- ally registered anti-counterfeit
measures; and consumers can return it to us once they’re done with it for recycling.
“We’re the first tube manu- facturer in the world to com- bine these four factors into one product,” he said.
In February, Impact will add a six-colour Montoli offset press to its operations, to boost its capacity.
“We’re also working on re- leasing a new product in 2019 to comply with the tough goals set by the government for what they’d like to see in packaging by 2025,” said Lajovic. ■