A Letter From ICPF’s President

January 23, 2025

Editor’s note: This letter was written and submitted to BoxScore at the end of 2024.

As 2024 comes to a close, the International Corrugated Packaging Foundation (ICPF) is proud of the momentum we’ve built to address the workforce needs of the corrugated packaging industry. By following our Strategic Road Map, we’ve developed and implemented ongoing strategies to strengthen
existing programs, initiate outreach, increase industry awareness, and evaluate impactful partnerships.I’m happy to share that we’ve achieved and made progress toward many of the foundation’s short-term objectives within each of the four road map pillars.

This year was all about bringing ICPF into the 21st century to ensure relevance for today’s students and job seekers. We launched a brand new, user-friendly website, www.careersincorrugated.com, to serve as a comprehensive resource hub tailored to the foundation’s many stakeholders, while also providing a trusted landing site to educate younger generations on career opportunities in our industry.

We released a new edition of ICPF’s Corrugated Industry Curricula for educational partners. The Curricula was completely updated and redesigned into five easy-to-digest video modules, each highlighting an important element of the corrugated packaging industry and the box-making process. Additional components included interactive worksheets, quizzes, and testimonial videos from current industry employees and other industry resources. This was a vast contrast to the black-and-white PDF files which had been given to educational partners in the past.

We premiered a new corrugated packaging industry career highlight and recruitment video, Consider a Future in Corrugated Packaging, which ICPF used in organic and paid advertising efforts across ICPF’s social media channels this year. The video was one of many recruitment and retention resources developed by ICPF in 2024 to aid corporate partners with their industry outreach efforts. You can see many of those resources and tool kits highlighted in the pages of this report.

ICPF also spent time exploring industry-specific certificates and tracks at trade schools and community colleges to build the industry’s talent pipeline. From these efforts, we’ve pledged to provide a grant to Ivy Tech Community College awarding up to $50,000 in student scholarships for two newly created corrugated industry Interdisciplinary Workforce Degrees, Machine Operators and Maintenance Technicians. Look for more information to be shared as this program ramps up next year, and as we find additional educational institutions to partner with.

Part of ICPF’s approach to increase awareness of the corrugated packaging industry is working to change the narrative so younger students learn and know about the many amazing careers that exist. We are looking to get more students interested in industry positions and choosing educational paths that will lead to industry jobs. This is why ICPF is currently working to expand our outreach beyond colleges and universities to community colleges, trade and vocational schools, and middle and high school students.

This year, ICPF signed a multiyear partnership with Project Learning Tree, an SFI initiative to increase youth awareness of corrugated industry careers. This approach aims to elevate the profile of the corrugated packaging industry earlier, as students participate in career exploration, planning, and development. We’re excited to see that partnership come together over the next year and will be sure to keep you apprised every step of the way.

ICPF also implemented our first round of annual surveys for the foundation’s partners in an effort to benchmark our progress toward short-term objectives and long-term goals. Hiring representatives from corrugated packaging companies and instructors from educational institutions completed survey questions that focused on current industry challenges, the most pressing needs for hiring managers and educators alike, as well as the ways in which ICPF can continue to add value for our Corporate and University Partners. We’ve used and will continue to use feedback from the surveys to inform future strategies and offerings. The great news is that 90.5% of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with the direction of ICPF in the past year.

Momentum is not a single event; it’s built over time. It’s the result of several things coming together to create a movement that is powerful and, in some contexts, difficult to stop. Our combined industry efforts are gaining speed, and now is the time we push the pedal to the floor. Together, we will make a difference.

Thanks,