Housed at the Elgin Innovation Centre in Aylmer, PAKFAB operates on a simple philosophy.
We listen. We understand. We design.
Their 350,000 square foot plant in the former Imperial Tobacco building belies their humble beginning in a rented barn near Aylmer in 2003 with one employee and a single laser cutter.
Herbert Hildebrandt, a partner in the company, is proud of the fact that of the first four employees, 21 years later two are still employed with PAKFAB.
And in that time, the firm has grown to become one of the Top 3 in North America in returnable packaging for the automotive industry, employing approximately 200 workers in Aylmer.
Anyone working on an automotive assembly line would be familiar with the racks, plastic totes and textile bags that hold the parts required for the job.
Hildebrandt localizes to firms familiar in St. Thomas.
“With Magna, Presstran and Formet, you can drive by and see the big metal racks that are often stored outside behind their buildings. That’s what we produce here. We’re specifically one of their suppliers.”
He cites another example.
“In the new launch of the RAV 4 coming up, we are a major contributor and will supply packaging for dozens of parts. So, those parts will be shipped to the assembly plant in Woodstock or possibly Cambridge and will be delivered in our packaging.
“Our packaging has empowered those parts to criss-cross all across the Central and Eastern United States, Ontario and Central to Northern Mexico.
“So we’ve become a solutions provider.”
The second half of the equation is referred to as a circular packaging solution to eliminate waste.
“It’s reusable. The packaging is designed to last for the life of the model of car. One of our big innovations in the industry is taking back all the packaging that we produce.
“It used to go to landfill or scrapyards. What we’ve done is we have a full recycling division. We call it cradle to cradle. From new to new.
Hildebrandt stresses, “Zero landfill is one of my favourite initiatives because I don’t think any of us likes to see landfills fill up.”
You can listen to our interview with Herbert Hildebrandt below.
