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Jack Link’s shows 'Wild Side' with retail-ready, club-store carton

Meat snacks provider switches from PVC canister to retail-ready laminated paperboard carton for club-store sales that provides greater shelf pop and improved sustainability.

Jack Link’s new laminated paperboard cartons provide high-quality, gravure-printed graphics.
Jack Link’s new laminated paperboard cartons provide high-quality, gravure-printed graphics.

Jack Link’s® Beef Jerky, located in the small town of Minong, WI, produces the number one brand of meat snacks in the $2-billion-per-year category. Family-owned and operated under the leadership of Jack and Troy Link, the company traces its roots back to the 1880s, when Jack Link’s great grandfather settled in the Wisconsin wilds, bringing his Old World sausage recipes with him. Passing that recipe down from generation to generation, the family began providing meat products to local and then regional restaurants, and then they began manufacturing and selling meat snacks.

Today, the company is the fastest-growing meat snack manufacturer in the world, selling more than 100 different products in more than 40 countries under the slogan, “Feed Your Wild Side!”

When a brand has a slogan that bold and commanding, both the product and the package have a lot to live up to. Recently, Jack Link’s sought to step up its club-store presence and, at the same time, reduce its environmental footprint by replacing its plastic canisters with rigid-window cartons to improve both its graphic appeal and its sustainability metrics. Helping Jack Link’s meet that challenge was Great Northern Corp.

“Jack Link’s was having success with a lighter-weight rigid-window package for smaller-quantity items in Walmart and other outlets and was looking for a better alternative to the canister and lid they were using in club stores,” says Jim Misfeldt, Great Northern Account Manager. The existing club-store packaging comprised a rigid, round polyvinyl chloride-based canister with a low-density polypropylene lid.

According to Ashley Brandt, Jack Link’s Brand Marketing Manager, Great Northern’s StrataGraph® process—which allows for the in-line converting of high-strength, laminated, paperboard packaging with high-impact, web-offset graphics—enabled the switch to a package with a greater shelf presence and lower environmental footprint.

“We were motivated to make a change on a number of levels, but the foremost issues were sustainability and cost,” Brandt explains. “We wanted to move into a format that was more sustainable. The new cartons from Great Northern are made from recycled paper fiber with a PET window, replacing PVC canisters and LDPP lids.

“The new cartons also presented the opportunity to lower our costs, which is important in a segment like ours that is so highly competitive.”

A new option for club store
StrataGraph was launched in 2004 by Great Northern as a way to develop new business beyond the company’s core competencies—corrugated box making and point-of-sale displays—“overlaid with a real desire to get into more retail consumer packaging,” explains Mike Schliesmann, Senior Vice President, Great Northern Business Unit Manager. 

“At that time, Great Northern had been living primarily in the corrugated packaging world. We also had an operation in Racine [Wisconsin] doing some consumer packaging with direct-print and litho-labeling on corrugated, coupled with point-of-purchase display work, but it really didn’t have a strong retail consumer packaging presence to it,” Schliesmann continues. “So when we came up with the StrataGraph concept, which would take some of Great Northern’s core competencies coupled with new technology and new materials, it seemed like a pretty good fit.

“Plus, we felt that there was a hole in the marketplace for this type of packaging. Folding carton products offer great graphics. However, from a performance standpoint—as manufacturers got more into the requirements for club stores, with their different shipping needs and stronger supply chain requirements—folding cartons didn’t stand up in a lot of instances unless they were reinforced with additional packaging.

“Another option was microflute corrugated packaging, and for the most part, package performance was fine. However, products were typically over-packaged, and graphic reproduction did not meet expectations. If you wanted great graphics, they tended to be a little bit more expensive, and you still had flute lines. In a club-store environment, where people rely on the packaging to make a quick decision about a product, having great graphics was a priority for brand manufacturers. So we felt there was a gap there that we could bridge with this type of product.”

The StrataGraph process and its required equipment were custom-designed by Great Northern. “It was a totally greenfield operation,” says Schliesmann. “The components all had to be put together and custom-engineered.” Great Northern worked with six machinery vendors to modify standard equipment and customize it for a unique solution.

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