Reusable Packaging Association Leadership — 2012

RPA Exec­u­tive Committee

Mike Hacht­man
Pres­i­dent, reL­o­gis­tics Ser­vices, LLC
Chair­man of the Board
Mike Hacht­man is Pres­i­dent and Founder of reL­o­gis­tics Ser­vices, LLC. reL­o­gis­tics pro­vides reverse logis­tics and han­dling ser­vices for reusable, return­able and recy­clable pack­ag­ing at 33 loca­tions across the United Sates. Mr. Hacht­man was a for­mer exec­u­tive with IFCO Sys­tems and has been in the reusable pack­ag­ing indus­try since 1997. Mr. Hacht­man has two B. S. degrees from Texas A&M Uni­ver­sity.
 

Robert Engle
Pres­i­dent of North Amer­i­can Oper­a­tions, Schoeller Arca Sys­tems
Vice Chair­man
Robert Engle brings 20+ years of oper­a­tions, man­u­fac­tur­ing and sup­ply chain expe­ri­ence within var­i­ous indus­tries, man­ag­ing both domes­tic and inter­na­tional man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tions and dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters within the food, chem­i­cals, plas­tic and elec­tron­ics indus­tries. He is the Pres­i­dent of North Amer­i­can oper­a­tions for Schoeller Arca Sys­tems, a large global reusable plas­tic pal­let and con­tainer man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany. Pre­vi­ously, Mr. Engle held posi­tions as the Vice Pres­i­dent of Sup­ply Chain for Dole Food Com­pany, one of the world’s lead­ing sup­pli­ers of fruits and veg­eta­bles, and was the North Amer­i­can Direc­tor of Sup­ply Chain for Storck, a $1.5 bil­lion dol­lar Ger­man candy manufacturer.

Mr. Engle has worked on sev­eral con­sult­ing engage­ments includ­ing the design and con­struc­tion of one of China’s first FDA cold stor­age and meat cut­ting facil­i­ties. He also has owned and oper­ated sev­eral suc­cess­ful busi­nesses includ­ing a food bro­ker­age oper­a­tion, restau­rants and sev­eral multi-million dol­lar inter­net com­pa­nies. He sits on sev­eral com­mit­tees for the AFDO, an FDA advi­sory panel.

John Frey
Pres­i­dent, TOSCA Lim­ited
Secretary/Treasurer
John Frey is the Pres­i­dent of Tosca Lim­ited. Tosca man­ages and ser­vices return­able pack­ag­ing for its cus­tomers in var­i­ous indus­tries. Tosca began own­ing pools of con­tain­ers in the mid 1990s and pro­vides a full range of ser­vices through­out the U.S. Prior to tak­ing over Tosca in 1990 with his busi­ness part­ner, Mr. Frey worked seven years for Wipfli & Ull­rich, a regional CPA firm in the Mid­west. He spe­cial­ized in busi­ness con­sult­ing and audits for man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­struc­tion clients. Mr. Frey has a B.A. degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Drew Mer­rill
VP of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment & Strate­gic Plan­ning, Con­tainer and Pool­ing Solu­tions, Inc.
Imme­di­ate Past Chair­man
Drew Mer­rill is vice pres­i­dent of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment & Strate­gic Plan­ning for CAPS. He is respon­si­ble for all of CAPS’ sales and mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties and has been an offi­cer of the com­pany since 2004. Since join­ing the com­pany in 2003, Mr. Merrill’s solutions-based and client-centric approach has increased CAPS’ rev­enue by 73% while main­tain­ing a 96% cus­tomer reten­tion rate. The Con­tainer and Pool­ing Solu­tions, Inc. (CAPS) is one of North America’s pre­mier choices for rent­ing and pool­ing liq­uid and dry con­tain­ers for auto­mo­tive, food, bev­er­age, and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, cos­metic, chem­i­cal and other indus­trial appli­ca­tions. CAPS has spent the past 10 years sup­port­ing some of the biggest and most pro­gres­sive com­pa­nies in their quest to ‘green’ their sup­ply chains while reduc­ing their over­all pack­ag­ing costs.

Prior to join­ing CAPS, Mr. Mer­rill suc­cess­fully man­aged sales teams for ser­vices and high-technology com­pa­nies includ­ing Pro­duc­tiv­ity Point Inter­na­tional and Synap­sis Solu­tions. In addi­tion, he was co-founder and CEO of a high-tech e-Learning ser­vices firm that grew to $4M in three years. Mr. Mer­rill has a B.A. from North­west­ern University.

Jerry Wel­come
Pres­i­dent and CEO, Reusable Pack­ag­ing Asso­ci­a­tion
Ex Offi­cio Mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Committee

Jerry Wel­come has 16 plus years senior-level asso­ci­a­tion man­age­ment expe­ri­ence includ­ing Pres­i­dent, COO, of the Inter­na­tional Fresh-cut Pro­duce Asso­ci­a­tion (IFPA), Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent for the United Fresh Pro­duce Asso­ci­a­tion (UFPA), and Vice Pres­i­dent of the Pack­ag­ing Machin­ery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Insti­tute (PMMI). He also has 13 years of com­bined leg­isla­tive expe­ri­ence, includ­ing six years as senior lob­by­ist for the Amer­i­can Meat Insti­tute (AMI); and eight years Capi­tol Hill expe­ri­ence, includ­ing six and a half years as senior leg­isla­tive ana­lyst with the House Com­mit­tee on Agri­cul­ture and Floor Assis­tant to House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill.

Robert Hib­bert
RPA Gen­eral Coun­sel
K & L Gates
Mr. Hibbert’s prac­tice focuses upon fed­eral reg­u­la­tion of the food and agri­cul­tural indus­tries, with empha­sis upon USDA. Areas of par­tic­u­lar con­cern include food safety, food secu­rity, ani­mal health, biotech­nol­ogy, label­ing, adver­tis­ing, and new prod­uct devel­op­ment.
Prior to join­ing K&L Gates, Mr. Hib­bert was a part­ner with a lead­ing Wash­ing­ton, D.C. law firm. He for­merly served as a senior attor­ney with the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture, and sub­se­quently directed the USDA’s stan­dards and label­ing staff, for­mu­lat­ing pol­icy in areas includ­ing food safety, prod­uct stan­dards and nutri­tion label­ing. He also held the posi­tion of Vice Pres­i­dent and Gen­eral Coun­sel with the Amer­i­can Meat Institute.

Mem­bers RPA Board of Directors

Phil Davis
Senior Per­ish­ables Sup­ply Chain Man­ager, The Kroger Com­pany

Phil Davis is Senior Per­ish­ables Sup­ply Chain Man­ager for The Kroger Com­pany. Mr. Davis’ career with The Kroger Com­pany has spanned more than 37 years. He began as a stock clerk and advanced through var­i­ous posi­tions in Pro­duce Pro­cure­ment and Mer­chan­dis­ing, Flo­ral Dis­tri­b­u­tion, Per­ish­able Freight Man­age­ment, and Per­ish­able Sup­ply Chain Man­age­ment. Mr. Davis spear­headed the inter­nal project con­ver­sion by Kroger to adapt a reusable pack­ag­ing sys­tem for many of their com­modi­ties. He has been a key advi­sor to the RPA’s RPC Label Stan­dard­iza­tion: Guide­lines & Best Prac­tices Task Force and also served as an advi­sor to the RPA Asset Recov­ery Committee.

Al Far­rell
VP of Asset Man­age­ment iGPs

Al Far­rell is cur­rently the VP of Asset Man­age­ment at iGPS. Al has had a suc­cess­ful career as an invest­ment banker, finance and trea­sury exec­u­tive, and entre­pre­neur. At JP Mor­gan Secu­ri­ties and Bank of Amer­ica Secu­ri­ties, Al advised on M&A trans­ac­tions, invested pri­vate equity and has raised over $6 bil­lion of debt and equity cap­i­tal work­ing with com­pa­nies in diverse indus­tries, includ­ing con­sumer pack­aged goods, retail, man­u­fac­tur­ing, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, and tech­nol­ogy. Al also has a broad range of man­age­ment and entre­pre­neur­ial expe­ri­ence and has served as the chief finan­cial offi­cer of sev­eral high growth com­pa­nies. He holds an MBA with hon­ors from the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness.

Hillary Femal
Direc­tor of Strate­gic Mar­ket Devel­op­ment – IFCO SYSTEMS N.A., Inc.

Hillary Femal has been with IFCO for over seven years. She has held var­i­ous mar­ket­ing posi­tions with the com­pany, most recently as Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor respon­si­ble for both the Pal­let Man­age­ment and RPC Man­age­ment Ser­vices divi­sions. In her cur­rent posi­tion, Hillary is the Direc­tor of Strate­gic Mar­ket Devel­op­ment for IFCO’s North Amer­i­can RPC busi­ness, encom­pass­ing mar­ket­ing, busi­ness devel­op­ment, and indus­try rela­tions. Prior to IFCO, she worked for Enter­prise Rent-a-Car in Tampa, Florida.
Hillary is a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­sity of Virginia’s McIn­tire School of Busi­ness and holds an MBA from the Uni­ver­sity of Florida.

Eric Frank, Gen­eral
Man­ager, Georgia-Pacific RPC LLC

Eric Frank has nine years of expe­ri­ence in the reusable pro­duce con­tainer (RPC) indus­try. Cur­rently, he is gen­eral man­ager for Geor­gia Pacific’s RPC line of busi­ness. Prior to join­ing Geor­gia Pacific, Mr. Frank worked at Rehrig Pacific for three years in the company’s mate­r­ial handling/RPC divi­sion. Also, Mr. Frank has served as the RPA chair­man for the Cal­i­for­nia Stan­dards Com­mit­tee and as the RPA’s chair for the Label Stan­dard­iza­tion Com­mit­tee. He has also served on RPA’s board for three years as director.

Carl Glick, Sr.
VP Sales, Poly­mer Logis­tics

Carl Glick is cur­rently VP of Sales with Poly­mer Logis­tics. Carl has had mul­ti­ple posi­tions in the return­able pack­ag­ing indus­try over the last 13 years. Pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence includes VP of Oper­a­tions, asset man­age­ment direc­tor, to cur­rent posi­tion of VP of Sales with Poly­mer Logis­tics. Prior to work­ing in the RPC indus­try Carl has sev­eral years of expe­ri­ence in the poul­try pro­cess­ing indus­try. Carl has worked with both start-up com­pa­nies and estab­lished larger com­pa­nies. He holds a BS in Busi­ness Man­age­ment from Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­sity, Chico.

Dave Har­vey
Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Direc­tor, IPL, INC

(bio not available)

Pat Kennedy
Vice Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing and Sales, the Kennedy Group

For the past 12 years, Patrick Kennedy had been the Vice Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing and Sales at the Kennedy Group. He also is one of the three prin­ci­pal own­ers of the com­pany. The Kennedy Group, a 36 year old diver­si­fied man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness, con­sists of four oper­at­ing busi­ness units. The most recent addi­tion to the busi­ness is Radio Fre­quency Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Solu­tions (RFID), orig­i­nally a start-up ven­ture, with over 200 cus­tomers nation­ally and internationally.

Patrick is respon­si­ble for all sales and strate­gic mar­ket­ing for all four busi­ness units within the cor­po­ra­tion. One of his main goals has been to build the com­pa­nies’ RFID busi­ness organ­i­cally and through acqui­si­tion. He played a piv­otal role in the company’s acqui­si­tion of NCR’s RFID busi­ness and also has been instru­men­tal in devel­op­ing and launch­ing eP 360TM, a web based soft¬ware tool that pro­vides data col­lec­tion solu­tions and com­ple­ments the busi­ness offer­ing within the RF Solu­tions group and the Mate­r­ial Han­dling Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion group. This has been a major ini­tia­tive which has turned out to be a great strate­gic move for this pri­vately held com­pany. As well, Patrick spends a great deal of time on strate­gic plan­ning with the co-owners of the busi­ness. In his 20 year tenure, Mr. Kennedy has served as the National Accounts Man­ager and as well other var­i­ous roles that have allowed this pri­vately held busi­ness dou­ble digit growth year over year.

The Kennedy Group had been a mem­ber of the RPA (Return­able Pack­ag­ing Asso­ci­a­tion) since 2001. Patrick served on the Board of Direc­tors for the RPA for 2 years. As well, Patrick was Chair­man of the Track and Trace Com­mit­tee for the RPA where he led the first pilot uti­liz­ing mul­ti­trip RFID tags in the pro­duce indus­try which ulti­mately gen­er­ated a white paper to share with the industry.

Patrick has an under­grad­u­ate degree in Eco­nom­ics from John Car¬roll Uni­ver­sity in Uni­ver­sity Heights, Ohio.

Norm Kukuk
VP Prod­uct Man­age­ment, ORBIS Cor­po­ra­tion

With more than a decade of expe­ri­ence in the reusable pack­ag­ing indus­try, Norm Kukuk has devel­oped and shared reusable pack­ag­ing exper­tise with lead­ing indus­trial, con­sumer goods, and food and bev­er­age companies.

He cur­rently pro­vides lead­er­ship for ORBIS’ mar­ket­ing and prod­uct devel­op­ment efforts, includ­ing the plan­ning, devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of strate­gic mar­ket­ing plans and goals. He dri­ves ini­tia­tives and pric­ing strate­gies that result in improved mar­ket share, increased rev­enue and enhanced profit mar­gins. Dur­ing his time with ORBIS, he has led efforts to develop inno­v­a­tive new pack­ag­ing prod­ucts, expand into inter­na­tional mar­kets and drive oper­a­tional efficiency.

He works closely with the sales orga­ni­za­tion to develop account man­age­ment strate­gies and iden­tify new oppor­tu­ni­ties. As a vet­eran of the reusable pack­ag­ing indus­try, he has strong rela­tion­ships with trade asso­ci­a­tions, indus­try lead­ers and key customers.

Norm’s under­grad­u­ate degree is from Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity and he holds an M.B.A. from the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Rich Lar­son
National Accounts Man­ager, Buck­horn Inc.

Rich Lar­son is cur­rently the National Accounts Man­ager for Buck­horn Inc, based in Mil­ford, OH. Pre­vi­ous to this assign­ment he was Direc­tor of Sales for Buck­horn. He has also served Buck­horn as Auto­mo­tive Sales Man­ager, National Sales Man­ager.
Before join­ing Buck­horn he was the National Sales Man­ager for the Con­tico Mate­r­ial Han­dling Divi­sion for 12 years, based in St Louis, MO. Con­tico busi­ness was acquired by Myers Indus­tries in 2001 and became part of Buck­horn at that time.

Prior to join­ing Con­tico, Mr. Lar­son was the Auto­mo­tive Sales Man­ager for Xytec, based in Detroit, MI and was active in the early intro­duc­tion of the first all plas­tic col­lapsi­ble bulk con­tain­ers. He was an active mem­ber of the AIAG Return­able Con­tainer Com­mit­tee and assisted in the orig­i­nal pub­li­ca­tion of the AIAG RC-9 return­able con­tainer guide­lines for the Auto Industry.

He holds a BA degree in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion from Yank­ton Col­lege. He is orig­i­nally from South Dakota and was in the restau­rant business.

Dan Lafond
Sales Man­ager, Sup­ply Chain Solu­tions Group, Rehrig Pacific Company

Dan Lafond has been with the Rehrig Pacific Com­pany for over seven years. Dur­ing his tenure at Rehrig, Mr. Lafond has held a vari­ety of sales posi­tions within the Food & Bev­er­age, Mate­r­ial Han­dling and, most recently, Sup­ply Chain Solu­tions group. He started at Rehrig Pacific as a Sales Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and has devel­oped National Account man­age­ment expe­ri­ence in the bev­er­age indus­try and at large retail accounts. Within the Sup­ply Chain Solu­tions Group, he cur­rently man­ages the South Region of the United States. This region con­sists of a team that man­ages regional and national accounts, devel­ops new prod­ucts, and imple­ments sup­ply chain ser­vice and asset man­age­ment pro­grams among retail­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers. Mr. Lafond resides in Dal­las, TX. He is a grad­u­ate of Stone­hill Col­lege in Massachusetts.

Lane Pence
Direc­tor, Growth Strat­egy, CHEP Americas

CHEP is the global leader in pal­let and con­tainer pool­ing ser­vices, serv­ing many of the world’s largest com­pa­nies. Mr. Pence joined CHEP in 1998 and has held roles in oper­a­tions, global sourc­ing, sales, con­sult­ing and strat­egy. He leads a team that has exe­cuted platform-based sup­ply chain con­sult­ing engage­ments around the world, with expe­ri­ence in new coun­try entry, new prod­uct appli­ca­tions, new cus­tomer devel­op­ment and new chan­nel entry. Mr. Pence was involved in pio­neer­ing RFID devel­op­ment, includ­ing the first suc­cess­ful test of RFID tags in pal­lets in 2002. He has worked with many reusable assets; includ­ing pal­lets, con­tain­ers, reusable plas­tic con­tain­ers, inter­me­di­ate bulk con­tain­ers and dis­play ready plat­forms with small gro­cery man­u­fac­tur­ers to some of the world’s largest man­u­fac­tur­ers, dis­trib­u­tors and retail­ers. Mr. Pence has held pre­vi­ous roles in mar­ket­ing, busi­ness devel­op­ment and asset dis­po­si­tion with Enter­prise Leas­ing. He is a Six Sigma green­belt and holds a B.S. in Busi­ness from Miami University.

Rick Sasse
Direc­tor of Cus­tom Trans­port Pack­ag­ing, Trienda

Rick Sasse has been with TriEnda for 16 plus years. TriEnda is the largest man­u­fac­turer of Heavy Gauge Sin­gle and Twin Sheet Ther­mo­formed Plas­tic prod­ucts. TriEnda has been serv­ing the mate­r­ial han­dling & pack­ag­ing indus­try in Ware­hous­ing / Dis­tri­b­u­tion, return­able ship­ping sys­tems, cus­tom engi­neered dun­nage and pack­ag­ing since 1975.

While at TriEnda Rick has held a vari­ety of posi­tions that has included Ter­ri­tory Man­ager, Indus­try Man­ager, New Mar­ket & Prod­uct Devel­op­ment Man­ager, Where he has devel­oped a solid under­stand­ing of return­able pack­ag­ing its mar­kets and require­ments. He cur­rently holds the posi­tion of Direc­tor of Cus­tom Trans­port Packaging.

Rick has been TriEnda del­e­gate to many of the pack­ing indus­try asso­ci­a­tions. 2006 Rick com­pleted a par­tial term as a direc­tor and has serve on var­i­ous RPA com­mit­tees’. He is cur­rently a mem­ber of the Asset loss group and looks to assume a more active role within the RPA. He believe that it is the respon­si­bil­ity of asso­ci­a­tions like the RPA to prop­erly inform and edu­cate all mar­kets on the ben­e­fits of return­able pack­ing, cre­at­ing con­sis­tent, under­stand­able and mea­sur­able stan­dards for jus­ti­fy­ing their use.

Robert Zachrich
Pres­i­dent, The Fabri-Form Com­pany

Rob Zachrich recently joined Fabri-Form as Vice Pres­i­dent Sales and Mar­ket­ing to lead the company’s sales and mar­ket­ing effort. Prior to join­ing Fabri-Form, Mr. Zachrich held sev­eral senior level sales and mar­ket­ing posi­tions for MAC­tac includ­ing the posi­tion of GM of Six Sigma for MACtac’s adhe­sives busi­ness. His career also included Man­ager of Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing for GE’s Switchgear busi­ness, Indus­trial Sys­tems divi­sion. Mr. Zachrich is a Gen­eral Elec­tric cer­ti­fied Six Sigma Black Belt and retired Cap­tain, U.S. Marine Corps.

RPA Com­mit­tee Chairmen

MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE
Robert Zachrich
Pres­i­dent, the Fabri-Form Company

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE
Hillary Femal
Direc­tor of Strate­gic Mar­ket Devel­op­ment – IFCO SYSTEMS N.A., Inc.

EDUCATION COMMITTEE
Bob Klimko
Direc­tor of Gen­eral Indus­trial Mar­ket­ing, ORBIS

Bob Klimko is Direc­tor of Gen­eral Indus­trial Mar­ket­ing for ORBIS. From 1989 to 2001, Mr. Klimko worked at ORBIS Cor­po­ra­tion in var­i­ous roles includ­ing Direc­tor of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, Menasha Ser­vices, Direc­tor of Mar­ket­ing, Direc­tor of Cor­po­rate Strat­egy and Prod­uct Man­ager. These roles pro­vided Mr. Klimko with tremen­dous expo­sure to mul­ti­ple indus­tries in the reusable pack­ag­ing mar­ket in both the industrial/assembly man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries as well as the per­ish­able foods busi­ness (meat, poul­try, and pro­duce, flo­ral). He then joined Norse­man Plas­tics, a provider of reusable pack­ag­ing for mul­ti­ple indus­tries includ­ing bev­er­age, bak­ery, food per­ish­ables, food, dry goods and oth­ers. In 2008, ORBIS acquired Norse­man Plas­tics and Mr. Klimko once again joined forces with ORBIS.

Prior to work­ing at Norse­man, Mr. Klimko was the Direc­tor of Mar­ket­ing & New Busi­ness Devel­op­ment for Wilbert Plas­tics, the world’s largest heavy gauge ther­mo­former and provider of cus­tom plas­tic solu­tions. Mr. Klimko’s for­mer asso­ci­a­tion lead­er­ship roles include Vice Chair of the Mate­r­ial Han­dling Indus­try of America’s Reusable Plas­tic Con­tainer & Pal­let Asso­ci­a­tion, and co-chair of the Coun­cil of Logis­tics Man­age­ment Reverse Logis­tics Com­mit­tee.
Mr. Klimko has an under­grad­u­ate degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, and an MBA in mar­ket­ing and per­son­nel man­age­ment from the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin-Madison.

INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Lane Pence
Direc­tor, Growth Strat­egy, CHEP Amer­i­cas