"There's a better way to approach this marketplace than to simply offer tried and older technology, and basically just mimic what a lot of other companies have done or continue to do," says Charter Films vice president of sales and marketing Mark R. Tesmer. "I can with 100-percent confidence say that in the last four years, we've really tried to change the way customers look at film, and we've really tried to change the way they consider using film in their end-use products."

Tesmer is summing up what makes Charter Films different not only from its older, established competitors but also its equally young opponents in today's film-manufacturing segment of the converting field.

"There are a lot of exciting new resins out there that in our minds take things like EVA copolymers and others and make them not necessarily the best choice in certain packaging applications," he continues. "We've actually engaged customers to not buy film by the pound but to buy it by the 1,000-sq-ft instead. We're that confident in our ability here to try to sell into their world the way they understand it."

Charter Films is the brainchild of Tesmer, chief operating officer Chris J. Trapp and vice president David G. Timm. The three met after their separate careers with various film-making companies and packaging converters led them to all work at Atlantis Plastics. Significant consolidation in the film industry in the mid-1990s created the market conditions in which they felt they could be successful as an independent startup on their own. Trapp brought his mechanical engineering and production experience, Timm brought his broad technical and converting experience, and Tesmer added his sales acumen. Charter Films, a specialist in blown-film extrusion, was founded in late 1998.

"We knew we just had to have absolute, great quality as a startup company," Tesmer recalls. "From the sales side, I knew if we could keep lead times to a respectable two weeks or less, we could bring a good service angle to the marketplace, and then just see what happens."

What happened was Charter's rapid establishment, growing from eight original employees to today's total of 60, and from two initial film lines to five—the latest unit installed last summer.

Charter's manufacturing location seems an unlikely place to be making high-tech films. Housed in an 88-year-old former grocery warehouse in the far northern Wisconsin town of Superior, the operation is actually well placed. Charter serves predominantly Midwestern customers, although sales also extend to both coasts and into Canada and Mexico.

The four-story building is solidly constructed with 14-in. concrete floors. Holes were cut into each floor, and an extension added to the roof, for example, to enable installing one film line's 70-ft tower.

"Physically, you'd never build a structure like this to blow film in," Timm explains. "But it's actually ideally suited for blown film. We use all four floors to their fullest. From a cleanliness aspect, we've got one of the better plants because of the pure concrete floors.

"I think Superior has turned out to be an ideal location," he continues, in spite of its five-month-long winters. "We can joke about the climate, but I've made film down in Dallas, where it's very hot. When you're making film, half the battle is cooling it off."

"Flat film and large rolls" pretty much describes Charter's product philosophy, Timm says. The company began focusing primarily on manufacturing multilayer coextrusions and sealant-layer films for flexible laminations. These materials, further converted by Charter customers, become printed rollstock, lidding or pre-made pouches. Industrial masking films for surface protection and high-density films for the tag and label market are now growing portions of the business.

"We had no intention when we wrote our business plan of wanting to make high-density films," says Tesmer. "Chris and Dave had lived the nightmare of trying to make high-density films on old, antiquated equipment. It's very difficult to make large rolls of good quality."

But old, antiquated equipment is not what Charter has; rather the operation boasts five state-of-the-art systems from Windmöller & Hölscher Corp. (Lincoln, RI). They include three 3-layer coextrusion lines—an 83-in. and two 63-in. units; and two monolayer lines—a 103-in. and a 63-in. unit. All are Varex® equipment with Optifil® P-2 automatic gauge-control subsystems and Filmatic® M multiple-mode or W dual-turret winders. Real-time online controls monitor and adjust gauge, cross-directional variation, yield and size control for width to keep them on target.

"We wanted to put in the best equipment that we could," says Timm. "We knew that if you have older equipment without some of the online controls, it's going to be hard to achieve quality. For example, we can run a 100-in. layflat, and have width control of +/-0.03 in. That's just not typical."

Tour a typical film-manufacturing operation with multiple lines, and it's possible to see the age of the machines progress as you walk through. Even the details of the electronics—something most likely to age the fastest—can stand out. Not at Charter. Timm and Trapp have continually updated each machine. The four-year-old monolayer line, for instance, has already been upgraded five times.

"Every upgrade that comes down the path through W&H for this equipment, we've taken advantage of," Tesmer says.

Timm concurs. "Just because a line is five years old doesn't mean we want it to act that way."

Newness also extended to Charter's production staff as no experienced film operators were initially hired when the company began making product. With more than 15 years experience each, Trapp and Timm had seen their share of pluses and minuses in different work environments, and wanted to start with a clean slate. They didn't want workers falling back on bad habits learned at their former film-making jobs. "We wanted everybody to say this is the 'Charter way,'" Tesmer says. "We didn't want to have to untrain people."

"Charter is our way of taking a lot of the positives and leaving most of the negatives behind," Timm agrees.

As a filmmaker, Charter lives in the wide-web world and intends to stay there. All its downstream slitting and rewinding is done through contract converter Technipac (LeSueur, MN).

Helping customers figure out what sealant-film structure they really should be using rather than selling them what's already been created is the basis of Charter's consultative style of film making. It accomplishes this through an unusual film-selection guide that lets customers choose a sealant that works for most or all applications. Then the sealant is paired with one of six "backbones" for unsupported or supported structures, depending on the other properties the package may need, such as strength, toughness, clarity, stiffness or barrier. Via this method, 24 different custom coextrusions can be created for packaging ranging from horizontal form/fill/seal retort pouches to vertical form/fill/seal condiment packets.

"Most film companies create a new line of films, and then pitch them to customers," Timm says. "They'll tell their sales force, 'Okay, guys. Here they are. Go sell them.'"

"It's not typical in this business for a film guy to say to a converter, 'Why do you buy what you buy?'" adds Tesmer. "Our approach has been to understand why some of these older types of products are in place, and then really bring everything that Charter Films has to the customer to improve the process and improve the package."

Not all customers are ready for this new way of buying film. Many of Charter's opportunities, though, come about when a packager introduces a new product requiring different film properties or when packaging graphics change. Then, converters are also typically open to looking at new laminations as well.

"If you do nothing but sell 3% EVA laminations to polypropylene, you haven't done anything technically innovative or advanced the product in any way," says Timm. "So every time, when a re-bid comes up, guess what? It comes down to, "What's your price?'"

While remaining focused and not trying to be all things to all people, the company has done some "outside the box" projects. Among them: water-soluble films for the automotive industry, antimicrobial films and even a high-tech reinforcing membrane film for a NASA weather balloon.

As Charter Films moves into its fifth year of business, company managers feel they've made significant progress in establishing the operation. With its commitment to quality and a drive to "change the nature of the film-making game," the future appears bright.

"We have a name now, a reputation," says Tesmer. "Certainly our bigger competitors know who we are."

FOR MORE INFORMATION

WINDMÖLLER & HÖLSCHER CORP., 800/854-8702, fax: 401/333-6491, www.whcorp.com

TECHNIPAC, Inc., 507/665-6658, fax: 507/665-2870, www.technipacinc.com