Ogden, N.Y. – In a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul and other New York State and local government officials, as well as Rochester business leaders, ProAmpac today officially opened its new, state of the art Collaboration & Innovation Center.

“This is ProAmpac’s new home for product development, rapid sample prototyping and evaluation of new packaging, as well as a training hub for customers and employees,” said Greg Tucker, Founder and CEO of the Cincinnati-based global flexible packaging leader.

Tucker said the new 35,000-square-foot CIC offers three unique capabilities, all under one roof, to help customers address their packaging challenges:

The Design and Sample Lab (DASL), a customer collaboration, teaming resource that has been ideating and designing new packaging concepts and printed prototype samples since 2014. The new lab was relocated from its former home in Ohio.

The Packaging Lab, enabling product developers to evaluate and combine advanced materials for performance and sustainability. The lab is equipped for filling trials and testing, shelf-life studies, packaging-testing, and sizing for stability testing and pouching studies.

The Analytical and Physical Packaging Lab is a centralized corporate physical and analytical testing resource. Previously, this work has been done at multiple ProAmpac production facilities and is now centralized, with new testing capabilities, in Rochester. The lab holds environmental chambers for hard-to-hold testing, as well as new upgraded analytical testing capabilities including SEM, FTIR, and DCS for film analyzation.

The CIC was constructed on ProAmpac’s Rochester campus and adjoins the existing production facility in the Town of Ogden near Rochester — one of the company’s nearly 50 global manufacturing sites. ProAmpac has more than 5,800 employees, supplying more than 5,000 customers in 90 countries.

Established six years ago next month, ProAmpac ranks as the second largest North American packaging company based on flexible packaging revenue. It ranks number one in flexible packaging innovation, number one for the breadth of flexible materials, and number one in sustainable packaging options, according to Tucker.

One-Stop-Innovation Center
“Our CIC is a one-stop center providing our customers with a resource that helps them address their packaging product development needs including product design, testing, graphic design and filling. I am confident this facility will help greatly reduce the time required to go from concept to commercialization, ” said Adam Grose, chief commercial officer.

CIC is the permanent home for LEAD ProAmpac Academy, where ProAmpac offers customers and employees twice-a-year training in extrusion, lamination, printing, and other flexible-packaging technologies, especially sustainability.

“Virtually every consumer products brand owner has made sustainability a top priority. Through ProActive Sustainability®, we have become the go-to source for sustainable packaging solutions,” Grose said.

State and Business Support
Tucker expressed gratitude for development assistance from the Town of Ogden, Monroe County, Greater Rochester Enterprise, Rochester Gas & Electric, the New York Power Authority, and New York’s Empire State Development Group and its Excelsior Jobs Program.