Liberty Intercept Blog

We're delighted to present our recent interview with Pack TV's Simon Twilley, a man with a vision and a passion for all things packaging. We caught up with Simon a few weeks ago, when he asked us about Intercept Technology Packaging, what differentiates it from standard or traditional packaging, and which industries have embraced Intercept packaging.

Recent unseasonably warm weather in our area suggests there may be a bad corrosion season ahead of us. Corrosive gases are more active in warmer and more humid weather. To help you prepare, we offer:

Our short video: Do You Know What You're Spending on Corrosion?" The Intercept Technology heavy duty barrier packaging is simple, effective and easy to use in comparison with other old-fashioned barrier products. This video will tell you how.

Cause and effect, action - reaction, push - pull; however you want to delineate it, some sort of change will cause transformations, both favorable and detrimental. What brought this thought on, you ask?  I was executing my February home property inspection - a task surely effortless in this crisp 40 and 50 degree weather rather than in past years trouncing through feet of snow. This year’s winter weather has been a record breaker and unseasonably warm in New England. It feels as if we are living in Maryland or the Carolinas.

How refreshing! Hartford's Mayor, Pedro E. Segarra, told our group: “Hartford is fun.” Fun! He wasn’t complaining about the state of budgets and economic affairs within our glorious country, which is all that seems to be trumpeted today. It wasn’t “despite the economic shortfalls of federal allocation to states and cities...blah, blah, blah"; instead he proudly spoke of Hartford’s great and diverse restaurants rivaling the cuisine of other nearby cities like Boston, New York, and Providence. Hartford, CT, welcomes visitors with museums, luxury hotels, parks (Bushnell Park pictured), city walks, theaters, historical sites, free city transports, and “trained advisors” (essentially “security forces”), all within a short distance of the fairly new Connecticut Conference Center. “We will welcome you and your guest. All will feel safe and have fun enjoying our city... after a couple of days at the show, the local business owners will know your name,” claimed Mayor Segarra.

Today's post is from guest Albert Greenhut of EMI.

This being an election year, we are hyper-aware of all the ways government impacts and affects our lives. The myriad taxes, foreign policy in the form of free trade agreements and import / export duties, even how private business interacts with the government, ongoing environmental debates, and so on.

Many of these ideas and changes have merit, but always seem to come with strings attached; some are just so convoluted and complex that it becomes difficult to determine who will be impacted and how. The view from the cheap seats allows me to ask, "what if a business could contribute toward solving many of these major issues while saving itself money and becoming more efficient?"

I’ve been a Twitter participant/enthusiast for about three years. For the uninitiated, Twitter is an online social networking service which claims 300 million users as of last April and continues to grow. With four Twitter profiles and upwards of 12,000 Tweets combined I can tell you, truly, I learn something each day from my fellow Tweeters. Let me share a few useful tidbits I’ve gleaned about packaging, converting, manufacturing, safety, sales, marketing, and customer service on Twitter.

Packaging: from @packagingdiva (JoAnn Hines), if you share a packaging challenge with The Diva and her connections, you will solve it quickly, making myriad new friends along the way.

Customer Service: from @thesaleslion (Marcus Sheridan), if you’re bold, decisive and make your blog content useful for your audience, you’ll rapidly gain and maintain customer loyalty. Another premium customer service role model is @Zappos (Zappos Shoes Online)

We talk about corrosion every day in our business. Corrosion costs the United States over $276 billion per year, according to this vivid video depiction by NACE International produced for the PBS series "Spotlight On..."

From guest blogger Albert Greenhut of EMI.

I recently spent a year working in South Africa. The majority of my working hours were spent navigating the winding streets of townships helping organize and manage HIV/AIDS educational programs for kids. In my free time I tried to put myself in fun adventurous situations, like bungee jumping over the Zambezi River (in which I rafted down the class 5 rapids the day before), island hopping in northern Madagascar, safaris, climbing Kilimanjaro, and hunting in the South African bush.

Today I learned that aseptic milk cartons (invented by Tetra-Pak), which are shelf-stable and do not require refrigeration, have long ago overtaken the old-fashioned glass bottle and, as Web Packaging describes it: "As a result, the aseptic carton, which predominates in Europe and Asia, has also made the refrigerated carton an afterthought in most of the world." The importance of this aseptic milk carton cannot be understated, as it allows people in developing countries to have easy, safe, convenient sustenance in the form of milk that keeps for months without refrigeration. We've mentioned here before that packaging can solve the world's hunger problem - this is clearly a step in the right direction.

By now you may have sensed the recurring theme of our recent posts, that of enthusiasm. This guest post by returning guest blogger Albert Greenhut, of EMI, hits the nail right on the head. Credit Albert for the photo of our enthusiastic sales team, at left.

Going from the high energy, high activity, and steady thump, thump, thump of the bag making machines to the muted skepticism and hushed conversations at the start of a sales meeting was a study in contrasts. The bag machines kept that steady beat going, no interruptions, no thoughts of anything but doing the job, making the bags, getting it done. The sales meeting, by contrast, was designed to see if that same dedication to getting the job done could be transferred to people, instead of transfer of film through the dancer rolls, the goal was training and a transfer of enthusiasm to the people. Joe Spitz and John Murphy both verbalized that at the beginning of the Liberty distributor training session: sales is the transfer of enthusiasm.