Atlanta-based GSC Packaging, a nationwide provider of turnkey contract packaging solutions, earned the top spot in the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 2013 Pacesetter Awards, which recognize Atlanta’s 100 fastest-growing private companies. GSC Packaging is a leading U.S. contract packager of powdered foods, drink mixes, supplements and diet products, and specializes in multiple forms of food contract packaging and secondary packaging solutions, including stick packs, pouches, large format pouches, vertical form fill seal pouches, and horizontal form fill seal pouches.
Revenues are undisclosed, but grew organically with new business as the employee base has grown from 30 to 300 between 2010 and 2012. In addition to offering customers production capacity without investing in capital assets, the co-packer has helped them achieve "decreased lead-time to market and built-in expertise in packaging design, quality procedures, and food safety,” says GSC's CEO Bob Shapiro.
The company recently renovated and moved to a 100,000-square-foot facility in Atlanta. The new facility hosts 15 production lines including seven horizontal form/fill/seal lines, three six-lane stick pack packaging lines and various semi-automatic, large format automatic, and secondary packaging and kitting lines. The new packaging facility also features a state-of-the-art layout and design, the latest air-handling technology, lot code tracking, real-time computerized inventory control, dust control and air-conditioned storage. The facility layout was custom designed to isolate products into separate suites that package only one specific product at a time to prevent cross-contamination--with cameras in each individual production suite for added security. Packaged products travel through small openings in the walls to separate secondary packaging areas, which further protects exposed products. In addition, the Atlanta location provides clients with strategic national distribution capabilities.
Criteria for the Pacesetter Awards included the requirement that companies are privately owned, based in the 20-county metro Atlanta area, and aren't a subsidiary of another company; and that companies have to be established before the first quarter of 2010, have a two-year growth in sales of more than 50 percent, and have between $1 million and $300 million in revenue in 2012.
For more insight about GSC's growth and capabilities, see article, "Quality is top priority in contract packaging growth strategy," published in the March/April 2013 edition of Contract Packaging magazine.
