Most of the 179 participants selected for this survey report worked at companies in the food industry (52%), with another 13% from companies in the beverage business. Some 22% described their companies as making nonfood consumer products. The remaining 15% came from other product segments.
In terms of company size, slightly more than half reported their companies employed 500 or fewer people. At the other end of the scale, 24% said their companies had more than 2ꯠ employees.
A full one-third of respondents said their firms were headquartered in the Midwest. Another 21% indicated the Northeast. More than 18% came from the Mid-Atlantic or Southeast, and just over 10% were from the Mountain States or the West Coast.
More than one in every four respondents had an engineering title. Nearly 15% said they were in company management, including plant managers. About 12% said they worked in the packaging department, and more than 10% of respondents worked in the purchasing department.
About 88% of selected participants worked at manufacturing end-user companies, while 6% said they worked at a contract packager. Most of the rest of the respondents worked at packaging service providers.
See the story that goes with this sidebar: How the recession affected packaging
