(Editor’s note: This is the 24th installment in a monthly series highlighting some of the region’s unsung manufacturers that make products essential to the economy and, in many cases, our way of life. See previous installments here.)
In what remains of Rhode Island’s once globally renowned jewelry-making sector, it’s the innovative and adaptive manufacturers that have survived past the industry’s golden age.
The same sentiment holds true at International Packaging Corp., or Interpak, in Pawtucket. Though the third-generation, family-owned company doesn’t make jewelry, it’s long provided jewelers with the packaging they need to protect their finished products while adding the final flair befitting a luxury item or gift.
It’s now among a dying breed, if not the last of its kind in the U.S., says CEO John Kilmartin.
“We used to have at least half a dozen, close to a dozen U.S. competitors,” Kilmartin said. “[Today] we’re probably about the last custom-made presentation box-maker standing, at least for metal boxes.”
Interpak has faced its own challenges over the years and countered these obstacles with market and production shifts.
Jewelry-packaging remains the company’s core business, Kilmartin said, but Interpak has expanded to serve a variety of companies, from chocolate makers to Sony Records. In the company’s Pawtucket showroom, boxes large and small dominate the walls and floor displays, adorned with brand names such as Nine West, Vineyard Vines and Rock Lobster. But there’s also a smattering of items such as gift bags, coin holders and an Ozzy Osborne vinyl jacket.
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MADE IN THE USA: International Packaging Corp. worker Luisanny Pirela assembles specialty boxes in Interpak’s Pawtucket manufacturing facility.
/ PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
This variety represents a significant shift from the business’s initial, much narrower focus: Brothers Jack and Jerry Kilmartin saw an opportunity in 1957 to make boxes for cuff links, which were then in high demand and required little variation.
“The old company joke is, back then you could have any color [cuff link box] you wanted as long as it was black,” said John Kilmartin, son of co-founder Jack Kilmartin. “So they started making black cuff link boxes [all from covered metal].”
But this singular focus soon gave way to other types of boxes. Cardboard boxes eventually became “a very important part of our mix,” Kilmartin said, as did the range of industries that now characterize Interpak’s clientele.
It hasn’t all been an upward trajectory, however, Kilmartin said. Just as Interpak has gained customers over the years, it’s lost some of its key partners to overseas manufacturing.
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ALL IN THE FAMILY: CEO John Kilmartin explains the history of International Packaging Corp., or Interpak, in Pawtucket while his son Peter, the company’s head of business development, looks on. /
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
“At one point in time, we had a lot of injection-molded plastic boxes,” Kilmartin said. “We caught the electronic watch industry. We’re the original box-maker for Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor. We made millions and tens of millions of those boxes, but eventually it all went to China.”
This competition from Chinese factories remains “the big elephant in the room” for the manufacturer, Kilmartin said, “because we’re constantly challenged to compete.”
The company eventually outsourced 20% of its manufacturing operations, but it continues to produce the remaining 80% of its products in Pawtucket. Interpak now maintains a facility in China, as well as a location in Scotland.
It’s not an ideal setup, says company President Frank Duffy, but it helps the company secure its longevity in the face of higher labor and production costs for American-made products.
“A lot of our competition is now in China, and we have a bit of a split personality,” Duffy said. “We love to make it in the States, but we have to offer business in China.”
Still, Interpak maintains a large footprint locally, with its Pawtucket facility covering nearly 400,000 square feet and employing about 200 people. The company has also continued its focus on family ownership, with Kilmartin’s sons, Peter and James Kilmartin, running business production and production, respectively.
The key to Interpak’s survival has been “constantly improving ourselves,” John Kilmartin said, and fostering relationships with employees. At the core of this process, Kilmartin says, is the company’s shift to lean manufacturing, which started in the early 2000s and remains a work-in-progress among both company leadership and workers.
Developed during the early days of Toyota, the lean method emphasizes self-evaluation as a driving force behind increasing efficiency without compromising production and workplace quality.
Within Interpak’s Pawtucket facility, it’s clear the company has gone all-in on this method. Color-coded signs signify the progress of production lines, machines and teams, and a dedicated classroom space serves to provide workers with ongoing training in the lean process.
Using this method, Rhode Island employees power an operation that produces a total of around 275,000 units per week, Duffy said, serving about 300 regular customers, while thousands of other clients work with Interpak as needed.
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Samples of Interpak’s specialty boxes. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
The company has also increased its automation capabilities, which Duffy says hasn’t come at the expense of jobs. Within the year, Interpak intends to invest $2 million in new equipment using shareholder investments, Duffy says – some of Interpak’s machines are now 25 years old, with 60 million to 70 million indexes.
“We have robots online, we have new machines coming,” Duffy said. “So, it’s an investment in the company, it’s an investment in the future, it’s an investment in employees.”
This forward-thinking focus will continue to apply companywide, Kilmartin said.
“One thing we keep doing is we keep changing as a company,” Kilmartin said. “Grasping, planning, doing, checking and adjusting. We’re constantly evolving ourselves depending on the markets and our customers.”
