Automation Drives Continued Sales Growth and Job Increases

Core Ingredients and Packaging Inc. of Opa-locka, Florida, is a minority-owned manufacturing company for the pharmaceutical, sports nutritional, and dietary supplement industries. With more than fifteen years’ experience within this industry, they now employ approximately 50 skilled team members. Core Ingredients and Packaging Inc. is focused on providing nutraceutical companies with high-quality ingredients (raw materials) for use in the manufacture of finished goods. The company has recently invested heavily in automation to provide packaging services to their existing and expanding product and customer base. They also provide blister packaging for tablets, capsules and soft-gels as well as other packing needs including blow-molded bottles and tops. 

A FloridaMakes business advisor assisted Core Ingredients and Packaging by reviewing their existing plan of initiatives. With a variety of initiatives on the table for consideration, the team quickly rationalized the long list of goals and established a proforma return for each initiative. To accomplish this, strategic investments were made in down-stream processes which were established as difficult for both their existing and desired customers to capitalize and implement.

With financial strength and boundless energy, the team began investing in considerable automation aligned with the established and rationalized initiatives. With documented priorities established and measurements in place, as well as a capital investment in excess of $400K of production equipment secured, the next requirement was implementation. FloridaMakes drafted a detailed implementation and training plan which matched the rationalized goals and proforma ROI. The training plan included all employees and utilized five OEM equipment vendors as providers for much of the training and implementation. The OEM trainers were brought in from as far away as Asia and coordinated with the start-up processes of the new automation. During the implementation, an internal training and sustainability process was established, ensuring the continuity and realization of value after the project closed. The project from start to finish was 13 months long and was completed on time, despite the onset of the Covid-19 Virus disruption.