A Different Twist

IPEC advises dairies to expect more from their closure supplier.

The landscape of the dairy industry has changed dramatically over the past decade. The challenge to supply the best possible product to the end user while remaining profitable becomes more difficult as the entire marketplace becomes much more focused on streamlining costs. Dairies and their critical suppliers must continue to partner in an effort to benefit from the synergies that an open relationship can offer.

The team at New Castle, Pa.-based IPEC has built an enterprise based on this business model, and it continues to pay off — not only for their customers, but the company itself.

More than 12 years ago, IPEC was started by two men, Chuck Long and Joe Giordano, who believed there was a void that needed to be filled in the dairy closures market; the commitment to providing a full-service solution for equipment, blow mold, training and consulting was something that would greatly add to the value provided by a closure supplier.

The dairy industry had grown accustomed to paying for each of these services a la carte and in turn could not fully benefit from one partner that would be focused on one primary goal: to ensure the dairy is supplying the best quality package to their end user in a cost effective way. IPEC’s approach to focusing on the quality of the entire system, including the marriage between bottle and cap, as well as the conveyance, filling and capping equipment has allowed them to add value by improving overall product quality, while reducing raw material and scrap costs.

“Supplying closures is unique in that it cannot be a passive approach to package quality,” says Joe Giordano, IPEC co-founder and chief executive officer. “When we supply our product, we realize that the closure is only going to work as well as the bottle that it is going to be applied to and the equipment that is used to put the finished package together. If we don’t partner with our customers and assist in taking control on the overall quality of the system, then we can’t ensure that our closure will function properly. We must continue to find new ways to add value and reduce costs to our customers since we only exist if they can operate profitably.”

IPEC has the highest service technician-to-account ratio in the dairy industry and its management team stands behind the belief that this is one of the primary reasons the company has experienced such solid growth and account retention over the past decade. IPEC is a privately owned company that continues to reinvest profits to better serve its customer base and precipitate additional capacity. The company’s focus moving forward will remain on continuously adding value to current customers and relentlessly evaluating ways to reduce non-value added costs both internally and externally.

Through these efforts and the volume efficiencies gained through new business, IPEC can ensure its closure pricing remains as competitive as possible. This philosophy is why IPEC has been telling the dairy industry: “Expect more from your closure supplier.”
— IPEC, 185 Northgate Circle, New Castle, Pa., 16105, phone: (724) 658-3004, fax: (724) 658-3054, Web site: www.ipec.com