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Our Value-Added Services
Everything you would expect from a world-class manufacturer. We help our customers solve their challenges by using our full breadth of manufacturing and printing capabilities to make your vision a reality. We control the quality and speed of production by operating all processes — design, prototyping, printing, manufacturing, and distribution — under one roof. You can trust Great Northern to:
- Fit your budget parameters and meet your marketing objectives
- Create functional solutions that perform throughout the supply chain
- Be on time and budget, allowing you to focus on your brand goals
- Manage inventory and labor, ensuring your solution is optimized for retail
- Help reduce high shipping rates, excess inventory, and overtime rates
- Provide real-time performance data to determine compliance and successful implementation of programs
Jump directly to a topic:
Responsive Consultative Creative Cost Effective Flexible Reliable Manufacturing Quality Driven Supply Chain Solutions Sustainable Development
Responsive
Our manufacturing facilities are centrally located in the Midwest, reducing distribution costs. Sales offices throughout the United States bring our team close to your operation.
Consultative
We apply a collaborative process that elevates your challenge to a strategic, transformative vehicle that works to strengthen your brand. Our team of creative experts brings a wealth of knowledge about consumer insights that drive purchase decisions. Sophisticated tools are used to understand current trends, macroeconomics, and market forces. These insights fuel our creative ideation.
Our webinars and blogs share many of our insights with our customers, providing them with the latest retail, packaging, and shipping trends.
For our Laminations distributors, we have taken our insight sharing to the next level. Our Laminations password-protected Distributor portal helps distributor sales reps prepare for important customer meetings with “how to sell,” success stories, trends, and other sales resources.
Webinars
Blogs
Creative
Winning a creativity award is always flattering. But first and foremost, Great Northern is passionate about helping our customers by doing what others can’t or won’t. That is why we focus on effective strategies that help our customers win.
For over 60 years, we have grown our manufacturing services and capabilities to match customers’ needs and expectations. Great Northern brings savvy insight to your project from start to finish. With over 80 in-house structural designers and engineers skilled in concept development, we ensure you receive a wide range of practical, creative solutions that fit your budget and meet marketing objectives. We develop innovative solutions based on a comprehensive understanding of your brand, product, distribution channels, market characteristics, and shopper insights when applicable.
Cost-Effective
By managing the entire manufacturing process in-house, we help reduce excess inventory, penalties, high shipping rates, and overtime rates due to tight delivery deadlines that can arise when you work with multiple providers. We also have in-depth knowledge about the specific needs of retailers to ensure your products are accepted every time.
Flexible
We value quality engineering solutions that minimize material, pack efficiently for distribution, and are recyclable for easy turnover.
Our print capabilities allow us to accommodate any quantity order and size packaging with our many print options and infinite customization opportunities. Whether we are printing a display, package, or edge protection, our color management process ensures extra visibility and brand impact. Depending on your project needs, we have digital, flexo, litho, and single-face laminate printing processes available.
We can also meet your material strength requirements, from light-grade chipboard stock to the heaviest corrugated grades. Displays can be made from corrugate, wood, metal, and electronic components.
Reliable, Consistent Manufacturing
We are proud of our 99% on-time delivery record, the result of our manufacturing, technology, and facilities investments. We are committed to delivering reliable, consistent solutions through:
- Redundancy: Built-in through our network of manufacturing and printing facilities located within the same geographic region.
- Capacity: Great Northern continually invests in upgrading or purchasing new, high-speed manufacturing equipment to maximize and increase capacity.
- Efficiency: Technologically advanced systems improve worker efficiency and quality control for faster turnaround times and consistent end products.
- Safety: We are committed to keeping our Great Northern team safe on the job. Through facility upgrades and safety programs, we continuously improve our work environment.
Quality-Driven
We understand that it’s not just your products we are protecting and displaying, it’s also the reputation of your brand and the potential for future purchases. Along with our color management program and G7 certification at several facilities, Great Northern has an ISTA® 6 (International Safe Transit Association) lab to test packaging to ensure product and package protection through the last mile.
Our in-house certified ISTA® technicians can test and certify packages and fully loaded pallets in our state-of-the-art ISTA 6 test lab to pre-determine if packages are optimally designed and if design modifications are needed. Great Northern is also a member of Amazon’s APASS network (Amazon Packaging Support and Supplier Network). Lab capabilities include vibration, incline, material handling, drop, and compression testing.
Optimized Supply Chain Solutions
With over 60 years of experience, we have manufacturing and inventory management down to a science. We can manage your projects from start to finish, including:
Assembly/Co-Packing/Fulfillment: We’ll can complete a pack-out in-house or ship it to another fulfillment center for your convenience. Choosing us to handle your fulfillment helps you focus on other important tasks. You can trust our skilled team to manage assembly and co-packing with quality.
Distribution: Once assembled and stocked with products, we’ll schedule and organize transportation to the necessary distribution centers or directly to retailers. By managing your logistics, we can reduce shipping fees and ensure the product arrives on time without damage.
Packaging Inventory Management Program: Our System 3000 program optimizes a packaging solution through design and considers ways to improve business transactions by helping manage inventory and product reorders through EDI.
Sustainable Product Development
Improving our customers’ sustainability scorecards starts with assessing and improving our own. It starts with evaluating our internal production processes to ensure we optimize energy consumption and eliminate emissions. Over the years, Great Northern has spent millions of dollars on hundreds of projects to do this.
The main material for our products, paper, comes from biomass, or biogenic carbon. 93% of the wood fiber that goes into our corrugated products comes from providers that follow Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI) practices and is 100% recyclable after use. Steel is North America’s #1 most recycled material. Steel, the main material in our permanent retail displays, is 100% recyclable. We also recycle 100% of our steel scrap.
Great Northern utilizes water-based inks. The carrier for these inks (water) is sustainable and does not release harmful VOCs.
