Alpha Packaging Inc is the classic story of a family-owned company started in 1987. It began in an old design room they cleaned out to use rent free. The Stec family considers themselves blessed to have grown into a one-stop, state of the art facility in Greenwood, AR. Chris, Amanda, and Staci remember nights sleeping on the office floor while parents Mike and Donna worked on the new business. Mike, Donna, Chris and Amanda are involved in the day-to-day operation. Donna is currently completing a redesign and expansion of the offices and production facility, including a new breakroom and design center.
Today, Alpha has over 200,000 sq ft on 27 acres located in a rural Arkansas community. With warehouses in Missouri and Louisiana, their trucks cover a 250-mile radius from the production facility. The facility also has a foam converting area that presents a good marriage with corrugated in the kitting arena. They also produce Benson Box products, a company Alpha acquired in 2023 and moved to their Greenwood facility.
Mike Stec says, “Alpha Packaging is equipped to handle any style box the sales force drags in. This Includes foam lined, triplewall, plastic corrugated, and other specialty products. The bread-and-butter base overhead accounts run mainly on two three color EMBA’s. The FFG 245 QS Ultima has an inline die cutter and ClearVision glue system. The new FFG 175 QS Ultima was installed last year and can produce up to 500 high quality boxes per minute. Both machines are considered hybrids because they run panel and blank sizes that competing FFGs cannot. We chose EMBA because of our experience with the reliability and performance of a used machine utilized during our startup phase.”
Since then, EMBA developed the patented Non-Crush Technology providing a quality image of Alpha’s boxes in the marketplace. Mike Stec continues, “As an environmental advantage, we can use lighter paper weight combinations to give the necessary container strength, while significantly reducing fiber content to maintain high sustainability, saving trees every day.”
The products run on these two workhorses’ are corrugated packaging for mainly non-durable goods such as food and beverage, paper products, cosmetics, etc. Alpha maintains a Food Safety Certification with an ‘Excellent’ rating.
Alpha Packaging also sports two rotary die cutters, a specialty folder gluer, a jumbo, a two-color press, four flatbed die cutters, a Baysek, a Solarco, and a myriad of sheet plant equipment. The foam department has a dozen machines specific to the fulfillment side, with some custom-made machinery for specialty projects.
To complete the one-stop shop concept, Alpha is a distributor of prestigious packaging products like 3M and IPG Tape and Specialty products, Pregis and Sealed Air Foam and Bubble products, Stretchfilm, Angleboard, etc. Many of these products focus on PCR solutions. Surprisingly, Alpha also sells, installs and services, Lantech, Phoenix, and Arpac Stretch Wrappers, Lantech Case Erectors, 3M-Matic Case Sealers, Shrink Tunnels, and fully integrated configurations.
A Game-changing Product Line
The first EMBA FFG QS Ultima™ machine introduced to the corrugated packaging industry was the 245 QS Ultima. Along with it EMBA’s true Non-Crush Converting™ concept was launched thanks to the revolutionary Ultima Feeder™ with no feed rolls. EMBA has after this transformed the machine portfolio to a standardised range with three more sizes, 175 QS Ultima, 215 QS Ultima and most recently 295 QS Ultima.
The Ultima technical platform is well reputed for its high-end technology, product quality and outstanding output. It is an important driving force for EMBA to evolve its Ultima converting lines to provide flexibility to customers, because a machine investment is a long-term decision and market conditions are continuously changing.
A great advantage that all machines are built on the Ultima technical platform is that operators can easily move between different machine sizes in the plant. Also, from a maintenance and spare parts availability point of view the standardized machine concept offer cost efficient planning capabilities in daily manufacturing operations.
Customers returning to for new investments in converting machines is something EMBA are proud of; long-term partnerships are valuable to them. It also proves that their focus on customer-driven development results in developing machines and solutions that the market demands.
