Emerald Packaging has made the first acquisition in its 63-year history, integrating Blower-Dempsay Corp., a Southern California facility, into its operations. The strategic move will allow the flexible packaging leader to shrink a standard two-day transit down to a matter of hours from the Mexican border, giving the company unprecedented agility to turn around just-in-time orders and helping its customers deliver the freshest product possible.
“We’ve been thinking about an expansion to a second site for the last several years,” says Emerald Packaging CEO Kevin Kelly. “But the companies that have come up for sale have either been too large for us to buy or too far away for us to manage. This one is the perfect size, only an hour away by air and has room to grow.”
Kelly says the acquisition of the Santa Ana, Calif., facility spells massive sales growth potential for the Union City, Calif.-based company.
“I could see us boosting our sales by up to 50% with this facility and additional machines at the mother ship in Union City,” he says. “So, I think that sets us up for some time.”
One of the largest produce packaging manufacturers in the country, Emerald Packaging’s customers include Taylor Farms, D’Arrigo California, Duda Farms, Grimmway Farms, Wada Farms and others.
“There were other big pluses, too,” Kelly says of the acquisition. “Our largest customer now has operations along the Mexican border, as do others. Time to market is everything, so being three hours to the Mexicali border crossing, or under two hours to Tijuana, was a big part of my thinking. A factory in place with the same equipment and suppliers as our own, experienced employees and room to expand sealed the deal.”
Just three hours from the Mexicali crossing, the new facility’s strategic location will also help Emerald reduce transit times and increase the shelf life of its customers’ products, the company says.
“It will make just-in-time deliveries easier, especially those last-minute orders that sail in during the week,” says Kelly. “Mexicali really is a two-day point now from Union City. By contrast, Santa Ana could deliver inside a morning. A lot of our appeal to customers is our agility at turning around those panic orders, and this only makes that easier, cementing a clear advantage we have in customer service.”
Kelly says the acquisition also gives Emerald Packaging redundant capabilities, a critical advantage during any potential business interruption.
“Up to now, if something happened here in Union City, we’d really have to rely on the aid of friendly packaging manufacturers to see our customers through,” he says. “Now, at least for some packaging materials, like salad and baby carrots, we have a second plant that can cover them. We need to add some capabilities there, like lasers that make those nano-holes for breathability, but that should be done by the end of the year.”
Equipped for the Future
Emerald’s new Santa Ana facility features an eight-color, 52-inch-wide Windmoeller & Hoelscher printing press, two Nordmeccanica laminators, two slitters and a thermal oxidizer. The company says it plans to add slitters with laser and hot needle capability and a second printing press soon.
“Our presses are currently all W&H — the best on the market for generations,” says Kelly. “This means great print quality and commonality of parts and tooling, which gets us flexibility where we run jobs and allows us to fix maintenance issues quickly, since press parts are common.”
Kelly says these advantages translate into better uptime, essential in a plant geared for quick job turns.
The addition of hot needle and laser units will give Emerald more capacity to run modified atmosphere packaging “where we expect most of our growth to come over the next few years,” says Kelly.
Aligning Company Cultures
Beyond equipment compatibility, Emerald Packaging says Blower-Dempsay’s company culture is also a fit, as it aims to integrate the staff of both companies and scale its headcount from 250 to 300 by year-end.
“Of all the challenges that can kill an acquisition, cultural issues stand out,” says Kelly. “So, we’ve developed a plan to onboard the existing employees and train the new ones we hire.
“Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve sent waves of managers down to work with employees to bring the factory up to our standards, which communicates how we expect them to care for the place they work,” he says. “Next week we’re bringing the entire crew up to Union City to spend time with us, see how we run our machines, schedule and check quality.”
Kelly says the most important aspect of this training is that the Blower-Dempsay staff will have the chance to experience Emerald’s company culture firsthand.
“We have an ongoing schedule of managers spending time there, which will help with the integration. Going forward, we aim to hire the same way we do at the mother ship, not just bringing people aboard out of need, but bringing people on because they fit how we work,” he says. “Because they have the right ethics. If we stick to how we’ve done things here, we should be successful there. If we don’t, we’ll know quickly, and course-correct as needed.”
Sustainability Play
Long known for its efforts on the sustainability front, Emerald was the recipient of the inaugural 2026 Printer of the Year award from the Flexographic Technical Association for its print quality and sustainability efforts. The company also won two 2026 Flexible Packaging Association silver awards for sustainability and technical achievement for its 30% post-consumer recycled resin potato bag.
How does this new production arm in Southern California help Emerald Packaging scale its sustainable packaging initiatives?
“As anyone knows who runs a factory, finding time to experiment, to run trials, comes at a premium,” says Kelly. “So, new initiatives often fall off the radar.”
But with its strategic expansion into Southern California, Emerald is effectively buying the time it needs to innovate.
“With the new printing press coming this summer and the new one in Santa Ana, we’ll have increased capacity by 30%,” he says. “We’re also adding laser capacity this summer, taking us from eight lasers to 10, which also opens time.
“For the foreseeable future, we’ll be able to turn trials more quickly, which will help us innovate and push new products out the door,” he continues. “Since most of what we’re working on these days is sustainable packaging, we’ll advance much faster than we otherwise would.”
As to the future, the CEO sees potential for continued expansion.
“I could see us expand further, especially with the large number of companies along the West Coast that are operated by older owners with no successor,” he says.
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