RPA Provides PACK EXPO Attendees With Wide Range of Instructive Resources for Implementing Reusable Transport Packaging

Arling­ton, VA, Novem­ber 17, 2010 – The Reusable Pack­ag­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (RPA) pro­vided a wide-range of in-depth resources for Pack Expo atten­dees inter­ested in reusable trans­port pack­ag­ing.

A steady flow of show atten­dees vis­ited the RPA’s Reusable Pack­ag­ing Pavil­ion that show­cased 13 com­pa­nies that joined together to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive, one-stop source for pack­ag­ing pro­fes­sion­als inter­ested in eco­nomic sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing solu­tions. In addi­tion, about 70 atten­dees par­tic­i­pated in the RPA work­shop on the Fun­da­men­tals of Reusable Pack­ag­ing. RPA pre­sen­ters, includ­ing Jon Kalin of Rehrig Pacific, Bob Klimko of ORBIS Cor­po­ra­tion, Lane Pence of CHEP USA, Drew Mer­rill and Keith Schall of Con­tainer And Pool­ing Solu­tions, and Lyle Schmitt of John Deere Com­pany, out­lined for atten­dees the first of four phases of imple­ment­ing a reusable pack­ag­ing strat­egy into a sup­ply chain. The con­tent cov­ered included:

• Intro­duc­tion to Reusable Pack­ag­ing
• Eco­nomic Mod­el­ing and Met­rics
• Finan­cial Alter­na­tives
• Asset Management

“We received a lot of pos­i­tive feed­back from atten­dees about the value of hav­ing all the sup­pli­ers exhibit together, and on our instruc­tive work­shop,” said Jon Kalin, RPA Chair­man of the Board, and Sales and Mar­ket­ing Man­ager for Rehrig Pacific. “We really fur­thered the RPA’s mis­sion of edu­cat­ing com­pa­nies about the proven eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of incor­po­rat­ing reusable trans­port pack­ag­ing into their sup­ply chain.”

“The Pavil­ion at PACK EXPO was a great suc­cess for our mem­ber com­pa­nies,” said Jerry Wel­come, Pres­i­dent of the RPA. “Every­one expe­ri­enced more booth traf­fic than pre­vi­ous years, and we had sev­eral atten­dees express seri­ous inter­est in join­ing the RPA.”

Mem­ber com­pa­nies that exhib­ited in the RPA Reusable Pack­ag­ing Pavil­ion included: The Kennedy Group, iGPS, IFCO SYSTEMS, ORBIS Cor­po­ra­tion, Con­tainer and Pool­ing Solu­tions, Poly­mer Logis­tics, CHEP, Schoeller Arca Sys­tems, Inc, IPL Prod­ucts, Ltd., Green Line Armor, Trienda, Rehrig Pacific and Buckhorn.

The RPA work­shop is an out­growth of a four-part cur­ricu­lum being devel­oped by the RPA to help end users learn how to iden­tify oppor­tu­ni­ties and then imple­ment reusable pack­ag­ing solu­tions to improve their sup­ply chain oper­a­tions. Kalin opened the ses­sion with an intro­duc­tion to reusable pack­ag­ing, and defined some of the ter­mi­nol­ogy and ini­tial steps a com­pany must go through to suc­cess­fully adopt a reusable solution.

Klimko and Pence dis­cussed the role of eco­nomic mod­el­ing and the key mea­sure­ments nec­es­sary for build­ing a pro­gram. Both pre­sen­ters stressed the need for atten­dees to “think like a CFO” and build solid and data-driven mod­els in order to demon­strate the Return on Invest­ment (ROI) of reusable pack­ag­ing. They also encour­aged atten­dees to take a holis­tic view of their sup­ply chains to deter­mine the impacts, sav­ings and ben­e­fits across the entire sup­ply chain. The most effec­tive reusable pack­ag­ing solu­tions will pos­i­tively impact all three finan­cial cat­e­gories of rev­enue enhance­ment, cap­i­tal uti­liza­tion, and oper­at­ing expenses. The pre­sen­ters directed atten­dees to the RPA Reusables Cost Com­par­i­son Tool at http://reusables.org/library/calculators.

Mer­rill, Schall and Schmitt dis­cussed finan­cial options for reusable pack­ag­ing sys­tems, and man­age­ment sys­tems used to track and man­age a reusable asset pro­gram. Finance options include own­ing or rent­ing reusable assets and pool­ing ser­vices. The pre­sen­ters gave detailed sce­nar­ios to help atten­dees deter­mine which model would best suit their sup­ply chains. They also detailed dif­fer­ent aggre­gate and indi­vid­ual track­ing meth­ods and tech­nolo­gies avail­able to track reusable con­tain­ers and their con­tents through­out the sup­ply chain. Item level track­ing includes bar code scan­ning, pas­sive RFID tags, active RFID tags and iGPS. Schmitt then gave an overview of John Deere’s com­plex and world­wide inte­grated logis­tics sys­tem. To view the work­shop pre­sen­ta­tions, click here.

About the RPA

The Reusable Pack­ag­ing Asso­ci­a­tion is a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort between man­u­fac­tur­ers, pool­ers, dis­trib­u­tors, retail­ers and edu­ca­tors to pro­mote the envi­ron­men­tal, safety, and eco­nomic ben­e­fits of reusable pack­ag­ing. The RPA serves as the col­lec­tive voice of the indus­try and uses its knowl­edge of the mem­bers’ prod­ucts and ser­vices to advance the adop­tion of reusable pack­ag­ing and sys­tems through­out the sup­ply chain. The RPA is focused on pro­mot­ing the expan­sion of reusables as the pre­ferred pack­ag­ing solu­tion across sup­ply chains in all indus­tries. For more infor­ma­tion, visit http://reusables.org or call (703) 224‑8284.

Media con­tact: Jerry Wel­come
1100 N. Glebe Rd, Suite 1010
Arling­ton, VA 22201
Phone: 703−224−8284 Fax: 703−243−5612
Email: info@reusables.org
Web­site: http://reusables.org