May 17th, 2022
We are proudly celebrating the 70th anniversary of Amerplast, together with our colleagues, customers and partners. Over the years, the company has grown from small business that began in the alcove of a two-room flat, into a pan-European group it is today. While building on our strong foundation, we are looking towards the future with high ambition, innovation and operational excellence. Today, our long history of innovations, sustainable solutions and long partnerships provides us with great tools to continue to grow together with our customers. From the bottom of our hearts, we wish to thank every individual and organisation that have contributed to our great journey so far, and all of you working with us today.
The Finnish Suominen family founded the company in 1952. Keeping the first-born dry was what led to the founding of the company. While a student in the United States, Mr. Sami Suominen came across the idea for plastic pants that held the diaper in place and, after a few years, his wife Mrs. Marja Suominen decided to try it out. She bought some machinery and began making plastic pants in the alcove of their two-room flat. Because the entire business idea and the first raw materials used were American, it was natural at the time to call the company Amerplast.
Moving from making diaper pants to manufacturing plastic rain coats led the way to other plastic products and an expansion of the company. They soon realised that plastics would be unbeatable as a packaging material and started manufacturing plastic film and flexible packaging.
The golden 60s were a time of both rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Amerplast knew the potential of plastics and thanks to plastic packaging its product range rapidly diversified. The first energy crisis in the 70s was a shock to Amerplast and indeed the entire world. Regardless of the global turbulence Amerplast was doing well thanks to good ideas and innovations. Plastic carrier bags were developed further and Minigrip® deep freeze bags became an item found in almost every Finnish household.
In the 90s, environmental concerns became an important competitive factor. Amerplast took up the challenge and developed environmentally sustainable business strategies, including material recycling, re-use of solvents and an overall improvement of the working environment. Three clearly defined areas of core competence developed within the company: hygiene products packaging, food industry packaging and retail packaging. A good example of Amerplast’s concerted effort to integrate innovation and technical expertise was its manufacture of tamper-proof AmerSafe® bags for the banking, insurance and transport sectors.
Read more about Amerplast history >>
Product development, quality and product safety have always been, and continue to be, key factors for Amerplast. Our Tampere and Poland plants are certified to the BRC Global Standard for Packaging and Packaging Materials. Joint development programmes and audits are used as tools with suppliers and other partners to ensure an uninterrupted chain of high quality, safety, and environment issues, and continuous improvements in all our operations. We invest in state of the art machinery, such as new printing machines, plate making and recycling systems to ensure operational excellence, high quality and sustainability.
Sami Suominen
Customers and their success have always been in the center of our business and operations. As a packaging supplier, we have seen, that it is our responsibility to constantly search for and bring forward the most environmentally friendly alternatives in materials and technologies. Our solutions support customers to achieve their sustainability goals, while meeting the commercial and technical requirements.
Amerplast has been using recycled materials since the beginning of the 90s. In the past years we have been able to further develop our packaging solutions containing increasingly more recycled materials, including post-consumer plastics and to expand the recycled solutions portfolio. Our goal is to increase the our share of recycled materials used in our production to 27% by 2030 and to have all our packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025.
Our goal is to reduce ours and our industry’s dependence on fossil based virgin raw materials. One of the ways to cut down fossil based raw materials use is to increase the use of renewable bio based options such as sugarcane-based Green PE and cellulose-based Woodly.
Our mission is to grow together with our customers, through sustainable flexible packaging solutions, completely integrated in a circular economy. Amerplast vision is to be the leading circular economy flexible packaging company in Europe and the preferred supply partner for our customers.
Read more about our sustainability strategy >>