In June, NE Opco, the holding company that owns National Envelope, the largest privately held manufacturer of envelopes, filed its second bankruptcy action in three years with the goal of facilitating the sale of the company. Although the company has been successful in securing Debtor In Position (DIP) financing, continues to operate the business and states that it has no plans to close any facilities or conduct layoffs, its travails raised the question in my mind about the overall health of the industry in an environment of declining mail volumes—and thus a declining need for envelopes.

In conducting research for this story, I also reviewed financial documents from Cenveo, the self-styled “world’s largest envelope manufacturer,” and spoke to a smaller specialty envelope company that has taken a different approach to the market, Colortree of Richmond VA. I also spoke to Maynard Benjamin, President & CEO of the Envelope Manufacturers Association (EMA), to get his perspective on the industry as a whole.

Cenveo still considers envelopes as a core business. While the company is undergoing strategic divestments of certain parts of its business, it maintains a bullish stance on the future of its envelope business, focusing on custom designed, direct mail and business reply envelopes. In fact in January of 2011, Cenveo acquired MeadWestvaco’s Envelope Product Group (EPG) and has reportedly completed its integration into the overall Cenveo organization. The Envelope Products Group manufactures and distributes envelope products for the billing, financial and direct mail markets and at the time of the acquisition, had approximately 900 employees. Even with that acquisition in place, in its 2012 annual report, Cenveo continued to report declines in revenues attributed largely to lower sales in its print and envelope segment as a result of decreased volumes from its primary print customers.