 to the Contract Packaging Association webinar are answering consumer challenges in the flexible packaging and labeling industry. I see a lot of people who are presently logging on. We'll give them a couple more minutes. And in the meantime, let me do a few introductions and overview. My name is Ron Puvak. I am the managing director of the Contract Packaging Association. Since 1992, the CPA has been promoting growth and welfare of members through the industry exposure and networking programs. CPA members comprise the nation's leading contract packages and manufacturers who perform all types of manufacturing and packaging functions for brands and CPGs, as well as entrepreneurs and startups. The Contract Packaging Association serves the needs of the industry through continued education, market knowledge, and customer relationships. One of our key components of our mission is education. Today's webinar is an ongoing commitment to inform the industry on innovation, as well as to stimulate the audience's interest. As we transition into the webinar and want a few housekeeping rules, first of all, all of you are on mute. If you have questions, and we definitely encourage those, please use the question box that's on your screen when we respond to as many as we can. This webinar is being recorded, and will be posted on the CPA website at contractpackaging.org within a day or two, so that if you miss a part or you have somebody else would like to attend, please feel free to take that advantage. There are other webinars on the site. Today, I am pleased to introduce our two presenters. First is Joe Kaye, he's the key account manager at Century Label in the Division of CNC Group. And Jonathan Jakubowski, and the director of SmartSols, also a division of the CNC Group. Each of them will introduce themselves briefly. Joe and Jonathan, please take it away, and the stage is all yours. Thanks, Ron. On behalf of Century Label and SmartSolve, we want to thank everybody for tuning in. First, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Joe Kaye. I work for Century Label as a key account manager, and I also head up the flexible packaging division here. Jon? Yeah, nice to be with you today. Thanks for having us. I am the director of SmartSolve. You hear a little bit more about the innovation that we work on later in the presentation. It's a pleasure to be with you today. Thanks, everybody. Jon and I truly believe today's webinar will be worth your time. Some of this information you guys might know or have heard previously. Hopefully, most of it will be new to you. We have an information overloaded webinar in store for you today, so thank you all so much for listening in. The topics of discussion today will be answering major challenges in the flexible packaging industry, led by myself. I'll also be leading active and intelligent packaging. And finally, Jon will finish up with a most unique and timely packaging innovation. So let's start off by answering major challenges in the flexible packaging industry. What your customers want and why it's important to them? Millennials driving the conversation from rigid to flexible packaging. You want it, but conventional Flexback printers don't offer it, and then we'll end up with does your packaging have SSI, solid shelf influencers? So let's first look at what your customers want. Pull was done at Global Pouch Forum in 2017 that said the most important packaging developments were shelf impact and differentiation and consumer convenience. Consumers really want everything they've always wanted, flavor, freshness, nutrition, and value, except today they needed faster and they wanted easier to use. Differentiation or shelf impact and consumer convenience are really driving CPGs to find creative ways to sell more products. Shelf impact, according to the flexible packaging association, 80% of brand owners agree that packaging influences brand value. And 81% of consumers pulled by the FPA said that they noticed when products packaging changes. So let's go into shelf impact and differentiation. How does your customer's products stand out from a sea of other products? The picture here shows many different products. Which one of these stand out to you? What makes their brand different? Can you help them sell more products? Differentiation or shelf impact are driving CPGs to find creative ways to sell more product. Some of these creative ways will be discussed later on in the webinar. But most of the differentiation is really just skew proliferation. Or the simple phrase, multiple different products. Most people or consumers want choices. As we, the contract packageers know that becomes expensive. Startup costs, copy changes, and plates can really take the wind out of your sale. In the past, this has been a major challenge. But now, due to the advancements in digital printing technology, multiple SKUs, high quality print, and low minimums are no longer a challenge. Now let's talk about consumer convenience. Consumer convenience is really driven by three key factors. Visual appeal and style, easy to use functionality and convenience and sustainability and freshness. So visual appeal and style. With today's competitive market and explosion of new products being introduced, CPGs have to be able to stand out on a crowded store shelf or internet marketplace. The best way to develop your package is to use every square inch of its real estate. The nice thing about flexible packaging, this can be achieved without any added cost. It's really your billboard to the world. Visual appeal and style of your package should be the core emphasis in your print. What else is important? Customers want large nutrition panels, clearly spelling out all the ingredients. People wanna know what's in the food they're buying. Consumers also wanna see the products before they're buying it. So with the right barrier films, the clear window is the best choice. Now I was at Global Pouch Form this year and there was an applesauce company. And in the past, I'm sure you guys have probably seen the videos or pictures online, but kids opening stand-up pouches filled with applesauce and they're full of mold. Well, this company that presented at Global Pouch Form came out with the very first see-through pouch. So mothers could actually see the applesauce not being rotted before they gave it to their kids. So I thought that was a pretty unique story that they told their sales when they came out with that clear pouch skyrocketed. They increased sales over 600% just by going from a metalized film to a clear pouch. So we're gonna talk about easy to use functionality and convenience. Today's changing society is constantly on the move and needs to re-energize quickly. Flexible packaging that's easy to use and functions well on the run is ideal for the on-the-go lifestyle. If we take a look at consumers, you'll find that a fair percentage of them aren't even sitting down to have meals. They're constantly on the move. Data has shown that there is substantial growth in the on-the-go food markets. Flexible packaging, once again, proving to be the largest segment in the packaging industry and this is really due to its convenience and functionality. So here's the bottom line. Flexible packaging assures sustainability and freshness. It allows us to offer the highest level of food safety. You can literally squeeze the air out of it. You can't do that with rigid packaging. I'm sure we'll all agree that consumers are becoming more environmentally conscious. They are really starting to demand the products they buy carry longer shelf-lifes. I know when I buy food, I wanted to stay fresh longer and I've even caught myself paying more money for that same package that offers a longer shelf-life. How about you guys? A recent poll by the Flexible Packaging Association found that 60% of consumers are willing to pay more for packaging that offers extended shelf-lifes. So next we're gonna go into why millennials are driving the conversion from rigid to flexible packaging. You guys might already know this, but flexible packaging is the fastest growing segment in the packaging industry. And the reason? Millennials. With over 92 million strong, the millennial generation is the largest in US history. They have by far the largest buying power out of any generation. Can anyone guess, can anyone guess, excuse me, how large their buying power is? $600 billion annually is their purchasing power. And by 2020, it's predicted to reach $1.4 trillion. That's a lot of buying power. But if we look at millennials, millennials have really spent their entire lives using flexible packaging. As children, they were the first to use stand-up pouches. If you think about it, just think of the Capri Sun pouches. From the beginning, millennials have seen stand-up pouches and everything they buy, from candy to nuts to soup. Here's a little data that I wanted to share with you guys. This is the conversion of rigid to flexible packaging. So if we look at the graph on the left, when given the choice between the same product and different packaging, consumers prefer almost 75% of the time flexible packaging over non-flexible packaging. And if you break that down by age groups, 81% of people between the ages of 35 and 44, say they prefer flexible packaging over non-flexible packaging. As a label company who offers shrink and flexible packaging, this is kind of scary. My team here, we always go to a show called Fancy Food Show. And there's a winter show and a summer show. I've been with Century Label for three years now. And over the years, when I first started three years ago, the majority of the products that I saw were labels and shrink sleeves. And over the last three years, I've really seen more and more rigid packaging converting into flexible packaging. When we were there in 2018 in January, it was remarkable. I would probably say 10% of the products there had labels and shrink sleeves, and the other 90% were all flexible packaging. So the market is really changing. They're converting over to flexible packaging. So next we're gonna talk about, you want it, but conventional flex pack printers don't offer it. So you're probably wondering, what does this mean? Well, all of you listening know the importance of packaging. I don't need to tell you that. The power of packaging design on the shelf can help you stand out from the crowd. So let me take this full circle. Flexible packaging is the fastest growing industry, but the biggest challenge is dealing with traditional flexible packaging printers. So what's the answer? The answer is clear. Digital flexible packaging is really the answer. So I wanna kinda go over why digital printing is the answers. First we're gonna look at speed to market. Digital printing can print so much faster and get to the laminator quicker because the ink is instantly dried. Digital printing offers lower minimum order quantities. It also offers the highest print quality. Digital printing can print up to 2,400 DPI. That's amazing. And it's perfect registration on every single imprint. You'll never have to worry about your copy going out of register in your picture or your package looking blurry. I think the biggest part of this is no flexo plate cost. Some flexo plate cost or tooling can be an upwards to $5,000 to start a project. But with digital printing, there are no flexo plate cost or tooling charges. And then the fact that digital printing can be customizable. So everyone knows that your package is a silent salesman. It never really stopped selling your product. But over the last few years, printing has become so advanced that the package is no longer silent. It can actually speak to you. So I wanna ask you guys, are you offering your customers SSI? Now you're probably wondering, what is SSI? SSI stands for solid shelf influencers and brands can take advantage of SSI to help propel their product sales growth. So I believe that Glenroy said it best and I quote, loyalty can't be purchased with advertising. In fact, millennials hate advertising, viewing it as inauthentic, end quote. So really groundbreaking active and intelligent packaging helps millennials live easier and therefore you win their hearts. And basically once you've won their hearts, they will help spread your brand by writing blogs, giving reviews, posting on social media about all the products that they like. So now you're probably wondering, how can I add SSIs to my packaging? So solid shelf influencers, so now we can take the silent salesman, your package and actually allow it to talk. HP has a technology, what's called embedded QR codes or digital watermarks that can really make your product stand out on the shelf. SSIs are the building block of active and intelligent packaging. So these next five SSIs will help your product transform into an active and intelligent package. What if your product incorporated a QR code that could be scanned? This QR code could quickly allow end users and consumers to read a blog about the experiences other people had about your product. Now we can totally spin this. That same QR code could track your package from start to finish, allowing you to find out who bought your product, where it was bought and how fast it sold off the shelf. So later in the webinar, we're gonna visit some videos that talk about embedded security features and QR codes. But first let's talk about active and intelligent packaging. So active and intelligent packaging can be labeled in multiple different ways, but we're gonna just talk about five today. The first one is gonna be augmented reality. And I'm sure you guys have heard the buzz around the industry on augmented reality and people doing very, very cool things with this. Next we're gonna go into some videos talking about how you can promote a company's vision. Educational product training and safety, these are really neat. I don't know if you guys have ever went to the store and bought maybe say a spray bottle of chemicals and it comes with a booklet that has six or seven pages on how to use the actual product. The text is so small, you can hardly read it, you almost need a magnifying glass. But there's different ways that we can actually embed product training videos into our print right now. So next we're gonna go to product use and promotion and contest and then finally we'll end up with security. So let's start the videos. Well, this is something pretty common, right? You walk into the wine store, you simply pick up a bottle of red, you pay and you walk out, right? Well, our shopping experience is about to make a huge leap into the future with talking labels and no, not just from me drinking too much of the wine. Tim Irwin is about to explain what the new technology that became popular with the Pokemon go craze has to do now with our wine purchases. Tim, when I say a big leap into the future, I really mean it, right? Yeah, Tina, we're super excited to be launching the first ever talking wine label and I think the great part is it's fun, it's interactive and it's simple to use. So, Tina, maybe we should go through it, how it works because it is kind of the future here today. So what you do is you go to Google Play or iTunes, you download the app, you follow the prompts. And it's very simple here. All you do is hold your phone over the label. There's a rogue substance when the bars are man impede. And you can see that it starts talking to you. So what's great about this is 19 crimes is based off authentic true stories. So in this instance here, we've got Jon O'Reilly who was fighting political oppression and was sentenced to mutiny and was either losing his life or going to Australia for 20 years. So it's also culture and history in the foundation of Australia. And that's just pretty cool. So, and it's augmented reality, right? Is that what we're calling it? And I have my bottle here, so this little guy is gonna tell me a little bit about the wine. Yeah, so not to be confused, virtual reality is basically putting on goggles and that's changing. Augmented reality is about changing what's in front of you. So, Pokemon Go that we've kind of known about for a few years, it's really altering the state of, and how you bring it to life. So each convict has a different story that they wanna tell and that, like I said, they're real stories. It's kind of taking convicts to colonists. So yeah, that's what augmented reality is and it's pretty exciting. It is pretty exciting. Now on top of it just being cool, and like you said, we're gonna be able to learn a little bit. What else can we gain? I mean, obviously I know that this wine is awesome. Yeah, the shopper experience is continually changing. You've got online shopping in the aisle and I think people really wanna know what they're consuming. What's in the product and this brings it to life. We know that everyone's somewhat connected to a smartphone these days and that's our source of information. So naturally it's easy to transition there and kind of learn more about it. And as you saw, it's a very simple process and not just in store, but think about going to a dinner party with family and friends at home, showing your partner what have you. It's so engaging, it's so fun. Like watching someone's reaction on this is really enjoyable. It's a tough enjoyment. Oh, you will definitely be the hit at any party if you break out this and show them that your bottle of wine has a talking label on it. And now this is 19 crimes wine. This is the type of wine that this app is gonna work with, right? Yeah, so we have seven different wines that this kind of works on. So as I mentioned, each convict has a different story. So the foundation for 19 crimes is that story and the history of Australia. You know, as a Australian, I'm very proud and this was our foundation. So it works across all our wines. As I mentioned, we're slowly introducing new wines. We've just launched a hard Chardonnay that tells you the first of our female convict, Jane Fleming and her story. So a great way to bring these real stories to life. Well, they always say there's an app for everything. There really is an app for everything now. So we will make sure, like you said, go to our Google Play and our App Store and make sure that we get that app. And then do this is gonna be pretty cool to show off to everyone. Tim, this is something pretty awesome. I can't wait to try it out. Thank you so much for telling us about it. Thanks, Dana. Have fun. I will. Don't go anywhere the morning play. We'll be right back. It is really how you can get people engaged with your actual product. So if you guys wanna know more about that, we can definitely let you know. This next video that I wanna show you guys is all about company vision. Now, Peak Enterprises is a good customer of ours. He is a CPG and basically what he wanted to do was he wanted to create a video to let people know what his actual company vision was and what he stood for. So what we did was we partnered up with him. We printed a flexible package for his tongue gel and tongue brush to actually go in that had a QR code embedded in the print. So when it's sitting on the store shelf, a customer can actually come up with their phone, scan it, and it would take them directly out to this video. So let me know what you guys think about this one. Starting a business is a journey. It's one steeped in risk and uncertainty. Values learned on a ranch in Wisconsin and in the mountains of Montana served as a foundation in this journey. Small invention designed to improve the lives of many created by a company appropriately named Peak Enterprises for shadowing the climb to come. The challenge, it started over 20 years ago with a culture focused on teamwork and perseverance. We hope our story is inspired to all entrepreneurs with ideas none too small. We're an American company with a story worth telling. Creating the video, but then also incorporating that into their package. So I want you guys to wrap your head around this. Imagine your package on the shelf with an embedded QR code that a customer can scan and watch a video like that. Educational products, training, and safety videos. So this would be cool if you had workers that you didn't want to have to actually teach. You wanted them to scan the bottle that they had to use in the manufacturing facility and watch a video on how to actually use the product. Portable relation control has never been easier with fast draw freedom. Fast draw freedom is a simple, and versatile chemical management system that saves you time and money. The fast draw freedom is easy to use. First, connect the freedom to a fast draw bottle. Then connect to a hose. Turn the water on. Rotate to the bottle or bucket fill position. Rotate to the off position when done. As a water benefit, the fast draw freedom has the capability to be a fulmer. First, remove the fill tube end. Then turn the dial to the bucket fill position. Only the fast draw freedom allows you to clean without limits. How much easier is learning when you watch a video versus actually having to read very teeny, tiny, fine print? I know for me, if my wife gives me a project at home, the first thing I do, if I don't know how to do it, is I go out to YouTube and I watch a video to see how to do it properly. Our next video is going to be product use, promotion, and contests. Bud Light actually did a mosaic print here that just got people extremely excited. Now, I can't do this video any justice. I think you guys just have to watch it. It's pretty compelling. Now, this is all mosaic print. As more and more brands try to engage music fans, they often just create more noise. Logos on a music stage have become just wallpaper and meaningless without the right brand behaviors. We know the best way to engage an audience is through authenticity and creating value for fans. Which is why we created 31 music-inspired Bud Light cans for the seventh annual Mad Decent Block Party, including four special hero cans, which were co-branded with the Mad Decent and Bud Light logos together. Using an innovative printing technology, we created 31 million unique label variations. So no two cans would be exactly alike. We pioneered Bud Light to not only be the first beer brand, but the first brand of the United States to use this new packaging technology, Bud Light presented at 22 Mad Decent Block Parties in 18 different cities with over 63 different artists performing. On Facebook, we've reached 23.1 million unique people with over 54.3 million impressions. Twitter generated 4.1 million impressions with an engagement rate of over 15%, and influencers on Instagram generated 13 million impressions. The best of the cans generated 81.6 million impressions leading to a 97% positive sentiment. People were so excited by the new Bud Light look, they asked where they could buy more to take home. In the end, Bud Light became more than just a presenting sponsor. It literally became collectible in fans' hands, reshaping perceptions, building music authenticity, and embraced by the Mad Decent Block Party artists on stage. You don't really have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising anymore when you do cool things like Mosaic, you let people do the advertising for you and it's free. So you heard the statistics is our security video. Now, this is gonna talk to you guys about embedded security in the label or ink. What would you do if each and every product you produced had its very own fingerprint? What would you protect if you could track and trace every printed piece you put out into the world at any given point in its life cycle? What would you create if your customers could interact with that unique ID to learn about your product, to verify its authenticity, to engage with your brand in real time? What would you do with ingenuity like that? Introducing Link Technology from HP. It's a printing innovation that uses the high-speed creation and embedding marks and unique IDs to give every single product you produce its own individual identity. A digital fingerprint that can be made visible or invisible. It can go on your label, on your package or directly on your product and can be followed from here to here to here. With HP Labs portfolio of secure marks and seamless digital press integration, you can easily match and identify packaging and final products in your supply chain to know exactly where each item is, while it's made, when it's shipped, where it's distributed and that it's where it's supposed to be, enabling you to prevent diversion, avoid theft and combat gray markets. Link Technology's secure marks allow you to quickly verify and authenticate products at any point in their life cycle, helping you guard against counterfeits, save on costly recalls and defend your brand from start to finish. Link Technology also gives you the power to create real-time interactive experiences that move your customer closer to your brand, empowering you to develop one-to-one relationships and deliver targeted offers and personalized content in real-time, all with one mark. From packaged goods to publishing, from graphics and photos to direct mail and marketing collateral, from your brand and your products to all the people they touch everywhere, every day. Link Technology from HP. Find out what you can do with it at linkcreationsstudio.com. I'll let you guys know, all of this can be achieved with our digital print capabilities. Century label has four HP indigos. We can help you guys if you have any questions on QR codes or security features, consecutive numbering for traceability, mosaic, variable data and personalization or names, numbers, pictures, et cetera, pulling from Excel databases. So thank you guys so much for listening in. I'm gonna pass this off to John now. Excellent, Joe. What a very incredible presentation. Extremely insightful. It's amazing to see what innovation is doing in a packaging world. With the Bud Light example, it's amazing to see that the package itself became even more valuable than what they were consuming. So there's a lot to do with packaging, a lot of innovation that matters. And one of the words that you used in your presentation, Joe, was that millennials look for authenticity. They use the word inauthentic when they were looking at some of the packaging types that were out there. As we segue into a presentation on an incredible innovation that really gives that millennial generation an authentic experience around sustainability, I'm delighted to begin with a video. So Joe, would you mind queuing the video up for us? Labeling, packaging and otherwise other industries. We've been involved with this specific technology since the mid-90s. And it's been something that we've seen develop and grow. And it's something that has inspired us to reach new heights, to identify new industries and new opportunities. I recently listened to an author of a book, speak at a forum, his name's Simon Sinek, and he wrote the book, The Infinite Game. And he was comparing companies that are pursuing finite metrics, finite goals, finite ends. He used the example specifically of Microsoft, who's always trying to create the best gadget, the better gadget than that, which their ultimate competitor would have of Apple. And then he went on to compare Apple to the Infinite Company, pursuing infinite goals, infinite metrics, and infinite ends. And as you look at the millennial generation and that word authenticity that really stands out to me when you compare companies that pursue finite ends versus company that pursue infinite ends. And what Apple has done to capture that infinite pursuit of opportunity is they go deeper. They go beyond simply a technology, beyond an innovation, and they tap deeper into the apparatus that moves the soul, that moves the heart, that moves the mind of the individual. With this innovation, I think we have a similar opportunity, especially as it relates to sustainability. Let me take us back, however, first into the 1950s. Water-soluble, paper-based technology, in our minds, is very comparable to that of Velcro technology. It was a guy walking through the cockle burrs in Belgium in the woods, found cockle burrs, got them stuck to his pants, and realized that he had something that would be able to be used in a very dynamic manner. Now, what was impressive about this inventor was he did not limit that innovation to one opportunity. He saw it as something that had global ramifications and was able to, with broad vision, take it into industries, including aerospace industry, shoes, and homes, everywhere around the world. We think water-soluble, paper-based technology has a similar opportunity. So today, given the fact that it's a premium technology that is extremely expensive, there's a lot of cost factors associated with it that every conversation that we'll have with individuals, that's the first thing that we wanna put on the table, is it's gonna be more expensive? So what are the value proposition components of the technology that drive the customer to make a decision to say, yes, I wanna invest in this opportunity? So of the six, the first one is employee safety. With employee safety, it's one of the most critical aspects of how a corporation runs. If a company has an incredible technology and vision but it doesn't keep its employees safe or doesn't keep its consumers safe, then we're in big trouble. Some examples of what a water-soluble barrier can do, specifically when you form a water-soluble paper-based pouch, you can put inside of it dry chemicals, for example, pesticides, that can go inside of the pouch and then once that pouch is sealed and delivered into the field where the farmer is, no longer will the farmer have to open up the package and pour the powder out into the mixture, causing potential aspirational elements of that pesticide into the lungs or touching it with their skin, you now have a water-soluble barrier that protects their skin and their breeding from needing to come in contact with that pesticide. So that's an example of one way in which a water-soluble barrier can be used to generate employee safety. Next, I'll talk about sustainability. I mentioned this at the beginning. This generation, the millennials and a lot of the CPGs that are seeking to tap into that purchasing power that Joe was talking about, this is a buzzword for them and it's critical that materials have the ability to register on these very metrics of what is green. So the water-soluble paper-based technology that we have been using, we've been able to leverage all different types of independent laboratory testing and all different types of certifications including the ones that you see here on the screen like EUReach and California Prop 65. What makes water-soluble paper different from its other water-soluble products that are out in the market, primarily that of PVA. When most people think of water-soluble, they think of the tide pods that go into your dishwasher. The primary driver of difference between those two items is that the water-soluble PVA is petroleum-based. Whereas water-soluble paper is fiber-based and that's a big opportunity to demonstrate a characteristic that a company looking for sustainability metrics would have interest in. We'll move to the next benefit and we'll talk about time savings. Let's go back one there Joe, thanks. Regarding time savings, there's a lot of opportunities for this but one of the things that I can say that you will probably resonate with me on is anytime you buy a glass or a vase or a jar at a store and you bring that vase home and there's a label that's stuck to it, how much time do we spend trying to carve off that label from that vase or that jar? Significant amounts of time. This is where, and that's just one example of many, this is where water-soluble labels with our technology, with the technology that can be used, water-soluble labels can simply be put under the sink and washed away. It's as simple as that. So the time savings delivered to the customer allow for the value proposition to justify an increase in spend on that type of label. Next we'll go into labor savings. I can use that same example but now talk about it in an industrial format. There are all sorts of reusable plastic containers that are used to transport food. Those RPCs as they are called use permanent labels and those permanent labels go to wash centers where there are dozens of employees that are employed to simply get those labels off because if there's residue that remains on that container it has become a possible transfer. There's a possibility of transferring the bacteria from the previous food that was being contained in the RPC to the next food that's being placed in it. So these people are employed to take off those labels. Well, when you introduce a water-soluble label you immediately reduce the need to have labor involved in that process and you simply as it goes to the wash center see the label go away. If I'll move to the next slide here Joe Pormes, thank you. Innovation, this is where the conversations get very exciting with potential customers that you may interface with. The story of Velcro that I mentioned has become relevant with this specific technology from aerospace to agriculture to anything you could possibly imagine in the bathroom. If you were to pay me a million dollars to guess what innovation your customer's coming to deliver to talk to you about with this type of technology I wouldn't be able to guess it. It's a technology that has significant opportunity because it is used as a raw material. And off of that raw material there are unlimited configurations that can be built and unlimited opportunity to try and use that substrate in a manner that helps to meet the customer's desire and demand. So I'll go to the next one. And that is product portioning. So this is the final benefit I'll highlight with product portioning the story of the tide pods I think tells it best. It's the ability to give consumers the ease of use of a single pod that they can just pull out of a package and drop into the dishwasher and not have to think about it once, not have to think about it twice. The same story could be told with detergents and there's a lot of dry powders that are out there and I should make note of this. Water soluble paper is not going to work with a liquid. It works with solids. So anything that's powdery, anything that's dry will fit inside of this technology and the technology will work as you saw in the video. So with single use detergents and the opportunities to make life at home more convenient for consumers while telling that sustainability story is a tremendous opportunity for folks looking to engage this technology. And as I close it out the thing that I'd like to point out is the ways in which this technology can be used ways that we have used it from label stock to pouches to board stock and all sorts of variations in between the technology has been converted as I mentioned leveraging it as a raw material and then turning it into something that helps the customer meet their specific need and their specific vision and requirement for the technology is what we have been able to do and we're certain and confident that the same value propositions that make this function you will also find in your company and your business. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me talk about water soluble technology and Joe talk about the innovation and flexible packaging space we're delighted to be a part of this presentation and looking forward to any questions that you may have. Thank you gentlemen, much appreciated. Excellent presentation. And we've come to that portion what I think is often the most interesting is the questions and answers. By the way, I personally have viewed this technology and I found it very interesting it's one of the reasons we wanted to have this conversation you guys did a great, great job. So a couple of questions that come through and let me get started here and I'll just throw them up and I think Joe and John and you'll know which one to answer. I believe Joe, you talked about the see-through pouch and the innovation you saw, global pouch. Do you have an idea or a sense of that of more expensive material or is, you know, since you're going away from metalized film, do you have any sense for that? It all depends on the product that's going in and how long you want the shelf life to be on the product. So a lot of people don't want additives to their products to give it an extended shelf life. So you have to get a better barrier film and barrier films do cost more money but generally they're always less than a metalized film. Okay, because that was actually the second question was tied into that, you know, was the shelf life compromised? So there really isn't any. Okay. Again, there's another cost question and this goes back to John. Paper versus the plastic dissolvable technologies. Is there a cost penalty going between one or the other? Is one a little bit more expensive or is it application-based? Oh yeah, that's a fantastic question. It is application-based but generally a PVA, water-soluble PVA, slightly less expensive than water-soluble paper. The reason for that, Ron, is because water-soluble paper is a relatively new innovation. It has not yet been commoditized and hit some of those verticals that PVA has. We think and we are seeing tremendous growth with this specific technology. There are ways that you can mitigate some of those costs and part of what we do every day is trying to find ways to make sure that we leverage the technology in such a manner that it hits the cost priorities and margin priorities of the consumer, which we believe the customers listening to this presentation will be able to do as well. Great, great. Again, remind everybody, if you have any other questions, please, we have questions coming in but we're gonna try and answer as many as we can. We have a few minutes. Can you show examples? You had some interesting part about the educational videos and safety as part of the label. Can you give us any examples of how somebody might specifically use, I saw the video, but are there any applications you can talk about in a true plant environment? Because oftentimes folks can't use their own smartphones in a plant. They're really not allowed to. So can you give us a sense for is this really smartphone technology or is it have to be something set up in the plant where somebody just scanned the package? I think it can go either way. More and more companies are allowing people to keep cell phones in their pockets. And if that person is actually doing their job, it's not really frowned upon, right? So if they're scanning that particular item in a plant environment, they're learning from that. I don't think companies are gonna get mad about that but I do have somewhat of a example I can share with you guys. We have a great customer of ours who's down the street from us who wanted to do something fun and exciting for one of their buyers who is retiring. This gentleman at this company had worked there for I believe 37 years and their marketing team wanted to do something special for them. So what they did was they had a bunch of labels printed with a QR code and a picture of that employee on it. And what they did was they wrapped, I believe it was 40 to 50 bottles of cleaner and passed them out at his retirement party. When you scan that QR code, it told the story about this gentleman's entire career from when he started to when he retired. It's not really an educational one but it tells the story. And I think that gentleman really appreciated the time that somebody spent putting that together for him. Very interesting. And that's kind of a cool, that's one you wouldn't think about, would it? Yeah. So John, you and I mentioned earlier that paper dissolvable is approved for indirect food contact. Is there any work or efforts to get it into direct food contact? As a flavor and it seems to me it'd be a very portion control kind of thing as well as some other aspects. Is there any work on that side? Yeah, absolutely there is Ron. We're working proactively on that. We have the direct food contact approval is really tied to the adhesive that's being used on the material. The water soluble paper itself is okay for direct food contact. But the paper alone without some form of an adhesive is not going to form into something that is usable in most cases. So we're working on an adhesive barrier coating that would give us the ability to deliver a package that would be direct food contact approved. And Ron, if I may just circle back quickly the first question you asked. I wanted to make sure I touched on this as well. One of the reasons that the companies that we're talking to in this industry and you'll see the conversation and buzz around it are driving towards fibers-based or paper-based biobased technology. I'm not sure if you're familiar with some of the tied pod challenges that occurred on the internet with teenagers consuming these things. That I can't attribute to, there's nothing we can do about that, right? But in terms of babies or elderly who would go and see those PVA pods under the sink and they would review them as candy, that's been a major issue and there's been a lot of articles on it. So the companies have come to us saying, well, we like the idea of having a paper barrier where you can put print on it and show it as hazardous. That doesn't mean you're gonna 100% stop a baby or an elderly person or certainly not a teenager from consuming them, but it does create an added step in between the person, the baby that's viewing this and the technology itself. Moreover, I mentioned biobased versus petroleum-based. That's a critical facet of sustainability as you look at the impact on the oceans. There's a lot of buzz around that. The pride don't have the time to delve into it too much and then finally, the ability to print on water-soluble paper. That's not something you can do on water-soluble PVA, which is a huge differentiator as brands seek to carry their brand to the end user. And the same innovation Joe's talking about with augmented reality and otherwise can be leveraged on this technology. You can print it like you can any other substrate and surface. So that's a major advantage to those looking at this technology. So again, I'll be more into our membership question and this is where this kind of comes from. Is there any unique filling process for the paper-soluble paper process? Is there unique filling processes, filling machines? Tell us about how somebody might use this if they've got a need and how they might fill it. Yeah, so this is an area where we want to make sure that you're coaching your customers and coaching your fillers. It is used on most common equipment, vertical form fill and seal equipment and otherwise there's different companies that are using it in different ways. There are some things that they have to do to slightly modify their equipment, whether it's to run it at a slower speed or to ensure that the blades are extremely sharp because the fibers can become pretty tough on the blades but relatively speaking it's used in commercial settings and it's used without issue so long as they're able to dial it in. The one thing I would say that needs to be a caution that's always exacted in conversations around this technology is making sure that it's protected from water. The moment that water enters into the arena, you might have some potential degradation. That's not to say humidity. So it does work in humid environments. There's certain metrics that we talk about where we've seen Miami, Florida, we've seen companies using these pouches and forming pouches without issue but if it turns into condensed water that starts to affect the package, that's gonna matter. So we protect all of the water-soluble materials that we have that we're shipping inside of plastic wraps just to make sure that there's nothing that could touch it that would otherwise cause the degradation process prematurely. Always proof in the pudding so to speak and this next question deals with that is do we see any, you know, significant launches of this technology and paper technology in the near future and you give us an example thereof? If not, we understand, but you know, give us an insight. Yeah, sure, I can speak in general is just because of NDAs and this is something that I think should be exciting to those packages out there that are interested in leveraging this innovation. A lot of these companies swear us a secrecy because they view it as such a significant competitive advantage. They wanna have the ability to make sure that their competition doesn't get access to it. So I'm bound in some cases, especially the larger cases but I can speak to you in industry forms. You're gonna see in the toys market segment coming out this Christmas a few toys that are leveraging this water soluble paper package innovation. And it's gonna be very exciting to see and the tons of orders are coming through all that already with millions of pouches. In the hospital segment, there is cases of this pouch being used on a filler, something that helps with spills that are occurring in the hospital, leveraging the benefits that I mentioned earlier of employee safety, leveraging the benefits of time savings. So it's an easier just toss and open and have to measure it out. So the proportioning aspect to it. And you'll be seeing this innovation also being adopted in industrial categories with chemical categories, cosmetic categories. There's a few out there where everyone, but if you're connected to those markets, you'll see this innovation in use. And if I may, I can point you to one thing that has happened that I can speak to publicly is BuzzFeed has a video using our water soluble paper-based technology and it's hit 1.5 million views. And it's just simply them using our technology and doing a DIY do-it-yourself project where people coat soaps, shampoos, and detergents onto that paper. And they turn it into these little strips that are then used for camping or used for single-use travel, what have you. And we've- Homeless people to do it. You're right, yeah, homeless people, absolutely. So ministries, charities have used the technology to help with some of the reduction of costs in terms of how they're using soaps and shampoos. And on our Amazon page where we sell paper, we've seen a tremendous growth in that category because of that video and growth and knowledge in that arena. Well, excellent, excellent. So this is probably the last question because there'd be a little bit more involved. The question is really about what is the process to look at utilizing these technologies? How does someone get more information, get involved, and where can they go? Can you guys give us an insight of what might be the process somebody has to go through to get the package into some of these technologies? What we've found is a lot of the SSIs start in marketing. SSIs start in marketing. Your marketing departments are really going to be the ones that drive this. A sales guy beat in the street is not going to sell this at a plant level. He's not going to go talk to a plant manager and try to sell something. This is going to come more out of a marketing budget than anything because it's an innovation. So that's what I would kind of say on my end. Ron, what I would say, this is going to sound like a selfish plug, but I truly am convicted by this. Sentry labels, expertise in digital print equipment. With the 6800s, we were the first company to use the HP 8000 selected by HP for that project. There's a ton of experience that we have, the G7 certification that we have in print technology. Sentry labels are a wonderful source for anybody that's interested in leveraging this innovation. And then here at SmartSolve, with water soluble innovation, we are the leaders in this space, have a ton of knowledge and can work with those interested on adopting this innovation for their customers. And go back and look at the PowerPoint. There's many other videos that were in the PowerPoint that we didn't actually view. So we could kind of look at those. And then also Sentry labels website has a lot of different blogs and informational pages where you guys can learn more about it. But it's always best if you would call one of the sales reps here. We have close to 100 years of experience in sales representation here. So any one of our sales reps can kind of tell you more about augmented reality or QR codes or any of the other products that you guys might be interested in. Excellent. Well gentlemen, I want to again thank you. Reminding everybody that this webinar in a couple of days will be up on the CPA website. More than happy for you to go back to review it or to all of the others. We're gonna continue these series. Hopefully you find it enjoyable. John, excellent job. Thank you guys, we appreciate it. Thank to all of you who are on the webinar today. Look forward to seeing you all in a future webinar. And thank you, appreciate it. Take care everybody. Thank you.