Click here to read about confirmed cases at Evergreen Packaging facilities

With the continued expansion of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has introduced a lot of uncertainty into the marketplace for both consumers and businesses. As the supplier of refrigerated cartons for global food and beverage companies and the supplier of paperboard and paper for both food and non-food grade companies, we take seriously our role in these important supply chains. Evergreen Packaging’s top priority is to protect the health of our employees and customers, as well as every person who uses our products, and to minimize any disruption in supplying products to our customers.

The Department of Homeland Security has defined certain businesses as “Critical Infrastructure Industries,” including forest products (paper), food supply and food packaging. Evergreen Packaging’s operations, as well as our supply chain, fall under this designation. Our PlantCarton® packaging, specifically, is essential to protecting food and beverage products. Consumers trust our package to help protect nutrients and extend shelf life, as they seek to comply with local quarantine protocols. Our customers, which include many global brands, trust our package to protect the product inside during food processing and throughout the supply chain, from their plants to consumers’ refrigerators.

In light of the uncertainty about the availability of important products, we are working to maintain our production to meet critical needs of our customers who provide important food products to consumers and to meet our responsibilities as good corporate citizens to protect our employees and the communities that we serve. We will continue to closely monitor developments in the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and vigilantly prepare for contingencies, for the purpose of seeking to maintain full time production at our paper and paperboard mills and at our carton converting facilities.

Our focused efforts toward preparedness include:

Protection of employees and facilities:

• Evergreen has put in place in all its facilities hygiene and sanitization protocols according to the guidance of the Center for Disease Control in the US (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), to prevent or forestall incursion of COVID-19 into our facilities.
• Evergreen has put in place rules for all employees to monitor health and self-quarantine according to the guidance of CDC.
• Evergreen is engaged in frequent sanitizing of high touch surfaces in all our facilities.

Protection of our supply chain:

• Evergreen sources the raw materials for its paper and paperboard, which is used to make our PlantCartons®, from North America.
• Evergreen has performed a survey of its material suppliers and at this time is not anticipating any significant delays or shortages in raw materials, although the situation is continuing to develop at an unprecedented pace.

Business Continuity Plans:

• Evergreen’s mills and carton converting facilities have each developed Business Continuity Plans, with escalations based on how widespread the Coronavirus outbreak may become. Each facility is diligently monitoring local situations related to the outbreak and actively preparing for contingencies.

As a food packaging supplier for customers who are meeting a critical need for consumers, we appreciate the trust our customers and consumers place in us. We are committed to delivering reliably and communicating in the event that there is any unavoidable disruption. We appreciate the opportunity to work with customers and consumers to make a difference during these challenging times.