PACKAGING BRIEFS Thursday, Jan. 12

GMA director assumes leadership role in new food safety alliance

Glenn Black, director of science operations, Food Protection, for the Grocery Manufacturer's Assn., has been selected to chair the newly formed Food Safety Preventive Controls (FSPC) Alliance Steering and Executive Committee. The Alliance was formed by the FDA in cooperation with the Institute for Food Safety and Health in response to the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 (FSMA). The primary mission of the Alliance is the development of a core curriculum and education materials to be used in training an array of stakeholders on the preventative controls requirements in the new FSMA regulations.

Colbert to close Louisville box plant
Colbert Packaging Corp.—a leading manufacturer of folding cartons, rigid paper boxes and paperboard specialty products—is closing its 33,500-sq-ft manufacturing facility in Louisville, KY. Company president Jim Hamilton explains, "At this time, with increased manufacturing capacity in our three other production facilities, and in an effort to streamline operations to meet the increasing demand from customers for cost containment, we have made the difficult, albeit necessary, decision to close our Louisville manufacturing plant." Customers currently serviced through Louisville will be transitioned to other Colbert facilities, including its two operations in Lake Forest, IL, and one in Elkhart, IN. Equipment currently used in Louisville will also be transferred to the other Colbert facilities.

B&R Industrial Automation hires growth driver for global packaging
Marc Wolf has joined B&R Industrial Automation in the role of business development manager for the company's Global Packaging Solutions Group. He will apply his 20 years of packaging machinery expertise to address the automation challenges facing machine builders, packagers and integrators. Wolf has held operations management positions for a number of respected packaging machine builders, among them Autoprod, Bosch Packaging Technologies and Rovema. He is a member of the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute's Education & Workforce Development Committee and the OMAC Packaging Workgroup. Wolf joins B&R as the company prepares to launch its next packaging initiative, which will make advanced control performance more accessible to machine designers, programmers, operators and plant maintenance personnel.

Sato appoints new southern region sales manager
Gregg Davis has been named the new southern region sales manager for Sato America Inc., a leader in bar code printing, labeling and EPC/RFID solutions. He will report to president Robert Linse and will be responsible for the continued development and growth of channel business within the southern U.S. territory. Davis will focus on securing new reseller agreements and working with existing Sato Business Partners to offer new DCS (data collection systems) and labeling solutions. Prior to joining Sato America, Davis worked in solution sales and channel management for companies such as Toshiba-TEC, Cognitive Solutions and TSC.

Pacific Packaging Machinery celebrates 50th year
Pacific Packaging Machinery is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2012. The company was founded in 1962 by Stephen Ellison, who believed the rotary volumetric "timed-orifice" filling principle offered many distinct advantages over other competing fillers. Recent acquisitions have helped Pacific expand its filling and capping machinery solutions. In 2007, Pacific acquired RatioFlo Technologies and, in 2010, Pack West Machinery. The company now offers more than 40-models of inline cappers, rotary cappers, lidders, torquers and inline components, including state-of-the-art cap elevator-sorter-feeders, unscramblers, accumulators and conveyor systems.

Lindal Group appoints new sales managers for North America
To further grow business development at a time of increased demand for the company's innovative aerosol dispensing solutions, the Lindal Group has appointed two sales managers for North America: Lisa Kopac and Mark Arnold. According to Phil Lever, group sales director, Lindal Group, Kopac and Arnold have extensive sales development and account management experience in industrial products. Kopac will be responsible for sales growth in the Midwest, while Arnold will handle the East Coast. Both will report to Abe Baksh, the company's managing director-North America.

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