ePac Flexible Packaging, founded in 2016 as the world’s first all-digital flexible packaging company, has reached its eighth year with a clearer picture of how its disruptive model performs at scale. From launch through 2022, ePac delivered annual growth rates of 50% to 100%, creating a new market for small and medium-sized brands seeking short runs, faster turnaround, and digital flexibility. While growth moderated in 2023 amid industry-wide financial pressure, the company still increased units produced by 30% year over year and now reports approximately $200 million in annual sales.

The broader flexible packaging sector faced significant headwinds in 2023 and into 2024, including inflation, higher interest rates, supply chain disruption, and tighter capital availability following the post-COVID reset. Many converters saw declining top-line revenue alongside rising costs. ePac responded by reassessing its operating model and accelerating strategic moves centered on technology, productivity, and footprint optimization.

Technology has been central to ePac’s strategy since inception. Its internal Software and Services group has built proprietary systems supporting ERP and CRM integration, online quoting, automated job routing, prepress automation, data mining, and digital production management. These capabilities underpin ePac’s ability to operate a distributed manufacturing model with centralized control.

One of the company’s key decisions was to consolidate its U.S. manufacturing footprint from 15 plants to 11, a move enabled by its digital infrastructure. ePac now operates U.S. facilities in Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Austin, Cleveland, Chicago, Madison, Boulder, Los Angeles, and Portland, alongside three plants in Canada and eight additional locations across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Africa. The consolidation is complete and intended to improve utilization, reduce complexity, and strengthen service levels.

At the production level, ePac is upgrading its entire digital press fleet of 58 units to the HP Indigo 200K platform. The transition to the new generation of Indigo technology is expected to increase productivity by up to 45%, with the full upgrade scheduled to be completed over the next 24 months.

Central to this distributed model is ePacONE, the company’s proprietary orchestration platform that connects all 58 digital presses across 22 global locations. The system enables automated job routing and management, effectively allowing ePac to operate as a single virtual packaging plant. Leadership describes ePacONE as the conductor coordinating workflow, capacity, and service-level performance across the entire network.

The third pillar of ePac’s strategy has been expanding its product capabilities. A recent example is the addition of flat-bottom pouch production through new equipment from Totani, enabling ePac to better serve coffee, sports nutrition, and pet food brands that require more structured packaging formats.

According to CEO Virag Patel, the company’s first eight years were about proving the model and building the infrastructure. “We created a new market for small and medium-sized brands and built a technology foundation that allowed us to scale rapidly,” he said. With 4,500 to 5,000 customers expected to be served this year, Patel emphasized that automation is essential to meeting service-level commitments. He added that continued investment in technology will allow ePac to support larger, more complex customers while maintaining its core value proposition for brands of all sizes.

As the flexible packaging industry continues to rebalance, ePac’s experience suggests that digital-first production, combined with centralized workflow intelligence, can move beyond disruption and into sustainable scale.