Polpak – it's been 30 years, and we are accelerating!
When – in the 1950s – plastic was beginning to reign in Europe, we were building the Palace of Culture. When – in the 1960s – the West European consumer drank caffeine-free Coke, we drank water from saturator drink stands. When our neighbors across the Oder River were demolishing the wall, we came up with Polpak!
The 1990s in Poland were a period of a difficult transformation and an opportunity for venturesome persons. The state-controlled economy was becoming private. It was the perfect time for visionaries and those familiar with the realities of Western countries, or both, which was the case for our company. The West developed in a stable manner during the period of the post-war peace, whereas we started as late as in the 1990s to catch up with that progress.
In the West, since the 1960s a new type of packaging took more and more industries by storm. The stand up pouch, usually called doypack, become a perfect solution for the food, detergent and related industries. Thanks to the small weight, stability and possibility of packing into it products with various parameters, this type of packaging stole consumers’ hearts. Poles also wanted western solutions! Salty snacks, nuts and dried fruit, pickles, as well as pasta, rice, and other types of loose products, deprived of the heavy packaging, became easy to store and light in transportation.
Over time, more and more industries began to discover the advantages of using doypack packaging, and such products, as cosmetics, detergents, food for pets, as well as tobacco started to be packed in it. The more often products packaged in such a way were bought, the bigger was the demand for machines packaging products into doypack bags.
And at this point we appear to address the need created by the market...
On one hand, the Polpak’s founders understood the West, the preferences of the European customer, and combined it with the vision that any moment the Polish consumer will be exactly in the same place, with the same needs. On the other hand, they demonstrated a lot of entrepreneurial spirit, technical knowledge and enthusiasm for creating solutions for Polish manufacturers who wanted to use western packaging standards.
The beginnings were not easy, as their visions were hampered by difficulties in access to technology and insufficient supply of materials for production. Today, Polpak’s packaging lines are full of state-of-the-art solutions of such giants, as: Mitsubishi, Sick, Festo, Siemens, SKF, Alfa Laval, Nord, Osram or Bosch Rexroth. In the first prototype machines from the 1990s you could find elements of Frania washing machine, Fiat 126p and other components removed from household appliances. What really pleased the wives of our founders was the moments when they couldn’t find their favorite electric curler or the cable from the electric baking pan, because everything irretrievably disappeared in the workshop. At that time, they couldn’t know that thanks to them the foundations of something really great were being laid.
The 30th anniversary we are celebrating was a period of great achievements, and allowed us to gain experience. Thanks to years of our engineers’ work, we have become one of the leaders in our segment. Our machines are in constant operation at facilities of such companies, as Philip Morris, Henkel, Sante or Nestle. Experience has taught us that pickles in brine require different materials than products with alkaline or neutral pH, and, for example, powdered materials are problematic not only in storage, due to their spontaneous combustibility, but also during packaging process they require high precision and extremely good sealing of the entire machine. Over the years, we have introduced improvements to our machines thanks to which our clients are able to make their dreams come true!
The Euro 2012 frenzy in Poland affected all industries! Including ours! We faced the challenge of constructing a machine to form packaging in the shape of mini football jerseys. Today we know that it didn’t help our national team, but if even one fan had a better mood thanks to snacks packaged in our “jersey” than without them,s it was us who won the Euro!
Our clients’ dreams are a completely different chapter.
It’s their ideas that encourage us to work on untypical solutions. Should the cap in the doypack be on the side or in the middle? The euro hole to hang on a store rack, or a cut-out handle for the consumer to hold, for example, a bag of milk or soap? A label in the form of a sticker, or information printed on film? Laser or embossed date stamp?
We appreciate our clients, in particular those that issue challenges to us! We remember very well those who, for the first time, requested a germ-killing UV lamp and those who wanted our machine, but didn’t have enough room to put it, so we had to construct a new L-shaped one.
Every new order is the joy of creating something new, every memory of these thirty years of hard work fills us with pride and satisfaction!
Was it tough? Yes, it was!
Was it worth it?
It is all the time!
