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Ink Maker Has A ‘Can’-Do Attitude
If you’re drinking soda from a can right now, chances are it’s adorned with ink that was made here in Charlotte, at a plant off Westinghouse Boulevard.
INX International Ink Co. makes ink for the aluminum can market. Its 46,000-square-foot Charlotte facility, which opened in 2004, is the world’s largest two-piece, metal-decorating ink plant, according to INX’s website.
Analysts say the company dominates its niche. Al Baird, INX general manager here, says it has 100 percent domestic market share and 70 percent internationally.
At the 70-person plant, Baird says, "we take a liquid and put it into a colored pigment. We mix it up, and then we grind it into an ink. That ink gets applied at the can maker to aluminum cans."
Some of the company’s handiwork is on display in the lobby: row after row of aluminum cans, ranging from Coke to Pepsi to Bud Light to Miller Lite. The company’s four clients are the major aluminum can makers: Ball Corp.’s Metal Beverage Packaging Division, Metal Container Corp. (part of Anheuser-Busch), Rexam Containers and Crown Cork & Seal Co.
INX is part of Sakata INX, a Japanese conglomerate.
Baird, 52, talked recently with the Observer about INX’s success, what lies ahead and how the company guards against complacency. The interview has been edited for clarity and space.
Q. How’s business?
"Business has been very steady. It’s very strong. It’s been steady through all the economic cycles. We’ve kept a steady pace of volume out here."
Q. How have you done that?
"I think the worldwide demand for the aluminum can. It’s a very environmentally friendly product; it’s 100 percent recyclable. If every can would be recycled again, there’d be no need to mine any bauxites, at least for the beverage can industry. It’s very durable. It’s friendly to low-cost shipping because it’s so light. You get tremendous value in this package."
Q. Has your payroll fluctuated much in the past couple of years?
"We’ve gone up a little bit. I think the biggest increase you see is that we have more technical service people now than we’ve ever had. I think it’s a shift to give our customers better service at their site. You don’t see a lot of people in the lab today because they’re out on the customers’ locations. We do quite a bit of travel here. Our lab people will go all over the world. Right now we have a guy in Brazil, and he’s been there for two weeks. We had two people in Europe last year for long stints. Vietnam is another one."
Q. What are the INX people doing at these sites?
"They’re assisting the customer on decorating the cans, maybe working through a problem. You know the difference between the ink industry and the paint industry? For years in the ink industry, paint people have always jumped in, saying, ‘Our products are similar, we can get in this.’ What they don’t understand is when a person buys a gallon of paint, he walks out the door and you never hear from him again. In the ink industry, you need to be ready to service every pound of ink that you sell, so you have to have people who are trained and knowledgeable. And you have to go out there and help your customers make a good-looking can."
Q. On the plant tour, your plant supervisor noted that we were looking at "Miller Lite blue" coming off the roller. Is the color formula for that or, say, "Coke red" as closely guarded as the formula for Coke itself?
"Yes, the Coke and Miller Lite colors are specific to those cans. They are top secret."
Q. Any plans for expansion in Charlotte?
"We’d like to, yeah. We think there could be an opportunity in our future to expand."
Q. Give me a sense of the size of your parent company.
"About 30 plants. INX probably does $300 million in sales. We’re part of Sakata INX, which is a $1.1 billion company. In this country, probably 1,300 people, and out of those, 138 who report up through this location. Now 70 are here, but another 50 or so are out at customers’ sites. We have embedded people with our customers, sometimes two or three per customer."
Q. You talked about possible expansion. What else does the future hold for INX here?
"We’re focused on continuing to give our customers value. Our raw material prices have gone up in the last few years, but we’ve been able to pass on only modest price increases. We come in here every day and try to do three things: We try to make the product better; we try to give value; and we try to provide outstanding service. Those are the three things that drive us.
"There are no barriers to entry in this market. We’ve got 100 percent of the domestic business, but we could have a competitor tomorrow, and we know that. We’re selling overseas; they could come over here and sell. There is competition out there, so we’ve got to be ready and keep pushing those three things to make us better."We could have a competitor tomorrow. We just don’t know who it is yet."
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