Austin Foam Plastics
Austin Foam Plastics
Written by Beth Wade Friday, 07 December 2007
Company creates packaging for technology businesses
Most people pay more attention to the computer the package holds and less to the packaging itself.
However, the opposite is true for employees at Austin Foam Plastics.
During the last 29 years, AFP has produced the foam pieces that protect technology products for major companies such as Dell Inc.
“I would say we have the lion’s share of the packaging business in the Central Texas area,” said Rick Lange, vice president of operations.
AFP designs and manufactures cushion packaging systems and corrugated boxes and then sends them to technology companies, which use those items to ship their products safely to customers.
To build the packaging, foam is shipped in sheets to AFP where in-house engineers design packaging for sensitive technology. The designs are tested on-site using a machine to measure the pressure an item can withstand if dropped from waist height.
The company spawned from Houston Foam Plastics and Lane Containers in Dallas. A representative was sent to Austin to respond to IBM’s needs in 1978.
“Austin had a bunch of people doing manufacturing up here. IBM, Motorola, Texas Instruments, they were all in Austin, 3M too,” project manager Bill Ashbaugh said. “[That era] was seen as an opportunity for packaging. Nobody really foresaw Dell at that time, but there was plenty of business in Austin.”
Now AFP is no longer associated with IBM, but in 1984 a company known as PCs Limited started to grow and needed boxes for personalized computers. That company became Dell and is AFP’s largest client. The relationship has led to AFP opening branches in other cities and states.
The company’s first Central Texas location was actually in Austin, but when difficulties arose after trying to find a larger facility, AFP moved closer to its employees and customers near Pflugerville, in 1997. Soon other technology-linked businesses made similar transitions.
“It wasn’t until about a year after we moved here that [Dell] moved its production facilities over off of Parmer,” Lange said. “It was an accident, but it was a great accident for us because we got closer to our customer by being here. We are actually closer to a lot of our customers, [like] Selectron, Wayne-Dresser. A lot of them are in the Pflugerville/Round Rock/North Austin areas.”
At this point, Lange does not expect AFP will expand in Pflugerville unless more customers move into the area because the company’s growth and location largely depend on its customers’ growth and location.
“The foam has a lot of air in it,” Lange said. “When you ship air, there is not a lot of weight to the truck. The cost of freight is pretty expensive, so about 150 mile radius is about as far as you can be competitive without having another facility nearby to handle significant volume.”
The company now has locations in Ohio, Dallas and North Carolina, and is Pflugerville’s largest primary job employer with 200 of its approximately 325 employees working in the Austin Area.
“[The city] is much easier to work with and much more accommodating than some of the surrounding areas,” Ashbaugh said. “We have found that to be a real advantage to being here.”
The Package Process
- The foam comes to AFP in large sheets.
- A customer brings a product to the company.
- The company designs packing, keeping in mind safety and cost efficiency.
- AFP makes a mock up of the packaging to show the customer.
- The company returns to the customer to discuss pricing and product packaging.
- If approved, AFP mass produces the packaging products and ships them to the customer.
Austin Foam Plastics, 2933 A.W. Grimes Blvd., Round Rock, TX
512-251-6300 • www.austinfoam.com
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