Elkhart, Indiana based Welch Packaging was featured on a FOX Business News segment that was aired on April 8.
FOX business reporter Jeff Flock visited Welch’s production facility and spoke with Welch Vice President Andy Reith, who explained how roll stock was transformed into corrugated board on its Fosber corrugator.
“We’re operating three shifts, full time, and we run about eight million square feet every day,” Reith said in response to Flock’s question about how Welch Packaging can keep up with the incredible demand for corrugated packaging products.
Flock noted that in 2020 alone, the industry produced more than 407 billion square- feet of corrugated material due to heightened demand, much of it driven by pandemic-related forces – enough to completely cover the states of Connecticut and New Jersey. The coronavirus pandemic caused a huge boom in online shopping, particularly from digital retail giant Amazon, whose 2020 third-quarter earnings reached a record high of $96.1 billion in sales, a 37 percent increase over the same period in 2019.
Reith explained to Flock that due to the continued strong demand for corrugated there is a “bottleneck” holding back box production, which can be traced to the mills where the paper is made. “There has been a tremendous backlog,” he said. “We used to be able to get paper in a week. Now it’s taking six to eight weeks to get roll stock.”
