Types of Corrugated Box and Packaging Manufacturers

There are two different types of corrugated box and packaging manufacturers, integrated and independent.  An integrated corrugated manufacturer produces the raw materials and the finished products.  This means that they own their own containerboard corrugated mills and use at least 50% of that corrugated material.  An independent corrugated company will buy more than 50% of the raw materials from other containerboard mills to manufacture the corrugated.

There are also different types of corrugated plants within those two categories: a corrugator plant (or a sheet feeder), corrugator/box plant, and a sheet plant.  A corrugator plant is a corrugated manufacturer that makes combined board exclusively to supply to other corrugated box plants for manufacturing boxes.  A corrugator/box plant is a corrugated manufacturer that makes combined board sheets, then processes the combined board into boxes or other finished products; they may also supply corrugated sheets to other corrugated box plants.