Structural, print, and converting support connected under one team — for established and growing consumer brands. Built for the middle market—and the brands on their way there. Since 1976.
Start by sending what you have — a carton off your shelf, dieline files, or just the problem. No switch required.
Most brands find us at a turning point. Tell us which one — and take a small, low-risk first step. You keep your current supplier until we’ve earned the work.
Not sure which fits? “We’re having issues with our current supplier” is plenty — start there and send us what you've got → Every path starts with a conversation, not a contract.
Substrate, dieline, tolerances, coatings, color, line fit — a folding carton has to get all of it right. You shouldn't have to know any of it. That's our job.
Order, and the press test was free. Don't order, and the sample and test report are yours to keep — the trial only earns the next conversation.
Start a Project — Send What You've Got →With both 41" and 57" presses, in-house structural design and prepress, and complete die-cutting and gluing capabilities, Graph-Pak supports short runs and high-volume production with equal efficiency. Finished cartons can stay in our warehouse and release against your schedule — so you can order the volume that prices well without taking the floor space to store it.
Room to Grow Into
217,000 sq ft in Island Lake
Franklin Park & Island Lake, Illinois
Our founder, John Hewitt, Sr., built Graph-Pak on a foundation of integrity, craftsmanship, and customer commitment. He remains active in the business today — a living link to everything the company was built on.
His son John Hewitt, Jr. grew up in this business and joined full-time in 2005, spending time in every corner of it before taking the helm in 2017 — with a clear mandate: modernize the operation while protecting everything that made it worth building in the first place.
Under John Jr.'s leadership, Graph-Pak has invested in new equipment, expanded its facilities, strengthened its quality systems, and deepened relationships with some of the country's most demanding brands.
Big suppliers rotate reps. Here, the people who evaluate your carton are the people who run it — and they stay. Average tenure across the plant is fifteen years.
When you become a customer, a sales rep and a service rep are assigned to your account and stay with it.
Nobody here gets up to speed on you by reading a CRM.
From emerging regional brands to national household names — here's what working with Graph-Pak actually looks like.
Graph-Pak knows our products and how they stand out on the shelf. They take the time to explain cost trade-offs — like when extra ink colors are worth it and when they're not — and recommend what's right for our business, not just what makes them the most money. They recently delivered our new tofu salad cartons on a tight timeline. Exactly the kind of partner we need!
Across our packaging suppliers, Graph-Pak is one we can count on to deliver every time. They monitor our forecast, manage our inventory, and reorders as needed to ensure a seamless uninterrupted supply. This freedom allows us to focus on suppliers that do need our attention. Knowing we don’t have to worry about Graph-Pak is worth more than I can put a number on.
Graph-Pak manufactures custom printed folding cartons — the paperboard boxes used for retail food, beverage, frozen, health and wellness, household, hardware, and consumer goods. Work is handled in-house from structural design and prepress through offset printing, die-cutting, gluing, and windowing, with specialty options including UV, soft-touch, reticulating and other coatings, foil stamping, embossing and debossing, inkjet coding for variable data, pressure-sensitive T-Tak and tear tape application, and fugitive glue (the removable adhesive some people call booger glue) for attaching coupons, samples, or inserts that need to peel off clean. For premium and reusable formats we also apply components such as magnets and hook-and-loop closures. Graph-Pak also runs micro-flute corrugated for club store packs and other retail-ready formats that need more structural strength than a standard folding carton. Warehousing and scheduled release are handled in-house, so finished cartons ship against your schedule rather than sitting on your floor.
Graph-Pak operates two facilities in the Chicago metropolitan area — Franklin Park and Island Lake, Illinois — totaling more than 300,000 square feet. For brands producing or distributing in Chicagoland and the upper Midwest, that proximity means lower freight, shorter transit times, and the ability to walk the plant floor when it matters. We ship nationally every week, and we will tell you honestly when landed cost favors a supplier closer to your line.
Yes. Graph-Pak owns the presses, employs the operators, and runs the production floor. Structural design, prepress, diemaking, sheeting, printing, die-cutting, gluing, and warehousing all happen in our own plants in Franklin Park and Island Lake — the work does not get sent out. That matters when something needs attention mid-run: the person who answers your call works in the same building as the press running your job, and can walk out to it.
We run SBS, CRB, and CUK (also called SUS or CustomKote), plus specialty substrates including poly-coated and metallized boards. Our board guide covers what each grade is built for, caliper ranges, and how to choose between them: see Choosing the Right Board on our resources page.
Yes. Our in-house team develops custom dielines on Esko ArtiosCAD and produces white CAD samples so you can test fit and evaluate on your line before committing to tooling. Because we build our own cutting dies on site, revisions do not go into an outside diemaker’s queue. Common structures are illustrated under Common Carton Styles on our resources page.
The essentials:
Full preparation guidelines — resolution, rich black build, total ink coverage, overprint settings, and how to submit — are under Set Up Your Files Right on our resources page.
Graph-Pak is ISO 9001:2015 certified for quality management systems and is a Certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) through the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC). The company has also been awarded an EcoVadis Bronze Medal for sustainability performance. Production follows HACCP and GMP practices for food safety, which govern how we handle materials and run every job for food and beverage customers. If your supply chain requires documented quality systems or supplier diversity reporting, we already have them in place.
There is no universal minimum — it depends on carton size, substrate, and print complexity. That said, offset lithography has a practical floor driven by make-ready costs. For most projects we are a strong fit starting around 10,000 to 15,000 cartons per SKU. Below that, make-ready cost spreads across too few cartons and a different process may serve you better.
Standard production runs three to four weeks from approved proof to shipment. New tooling adds a few days upfront — we build our own cutting dies in house rather than waiting on an outside diemaker, which keeps that step on our schedule instead of someone else's. Reorders on existing tooling can move faster. And when your supplier slipped and the clock is genuinely against you, call first — this company was built scrappy, and we are often at our best when time is tight. Bring the date; we will tell you straight whether we can hit it.
Call (847) 451-7400 or email sales@graphpak.com. The best starting point is a current production sample in the mail along with your specs — the physical carton answers most of the questions a quote needs. Short of that, the essentials: carton dimensions, substrate, quantity and release schedule, artwork status, and target timeline. The more of it we get upfront, the faster the number comes back meaningful.
Yes. Send a sample carton and your artwork files. We will reverse-engineer the dieline, match the substrate and caliper, and produce proofs for color comparison. Most supplier transitions take one production cycle to dial in. Because printing, die-cutting, and gluing all happen under our roof, we can hold the match consistently from the first run forward.
No. Some brands qualify Graph-Pak as a second source alongside their incumbent; others move whole programs over when the timing is right. Either way works. A second qualified supplier protects against missed shipments, price increases, and capacity constraints, and requires no change to existing programs.
No. We don’t contact incumbent suppliers, and nobody hears from us that you’re looking. The folding carton world is small — audits, cost teardowns, and parallel specs stay between us until you decide otherwise.
Longer than most buyers expect when it’s planned — and most of that runway sits on your side. Your current supplier is typically holding months of your finished goods, working open production orders, and carrying board bought against your forecast. Our side moves at whatever speed the situation requires: we build our own dies in days, control our own press schedule, and compress qualification when a supplier fails and there is no runway. But the calm version beats the rescue: a second source is insurance, and insurance can’t be bought during the fire — qualify one SKU while your program is healthy and the clock stops mattering.
Common, and not a blocker to getting started. The structure never needed them — send the physical carton and we reverse-engineer the dieline, match the board, and cut white CAD samples you can qualify with; for the structure, the carton itself is the backup copy. The art has to come from the brand side, and here’s the honest industry reality: unless you’re big enough to run an outside design agency, your working files probably live at your current supplier. Our standing advice, whoever you print with: keep your own copies — it’s your brand, and the files should be yours too. There’s usually runway to track them down before production art goes on press, and when they surface, our prepress team preflights and prepares them for press. And a graphics change — a rebrand, a refresh, a new regulatory panel — is one of the best windows to qualify a second supplier: the art is new by definition, and every supplier is making new plates anyway.
The first CAD sample is free — cut from your dieline, no tooling required, typically a couple of days; supply your current art files and we'll digitally print your art on it. That is enough to fit-test on your line before anyone commits. A full press test on production tooling is quoted up front, and 100% of that cost is credited against a first order.
SB 343 is California’s recyclability-labeling law — the rules for when a package can be marked recyclable — and it’s separate from EPR, though the two usually land on the same team. We give you everything the determination is built on: your board and construction mapped to CalRecycle's findings, plus design, PFAS/TOF, and heavy-metals documentation, assembled for your regulatory team or counsel. The recyclability claim itself — and the records behind it — stay with the brand owner whose name is on the package. That's not us stepping back; it's who the law puts the obligation on. Not even CalRecycle certifies an individual label.
A material data package: your substrate's material type and form run against CalRecycle's Material Characterization findings, board and barrier specs, and current PFAS/TOF and heavy-metals letters — the evidence your team needs to make and defend a recyclability claim.
EPR — Extended Producer Responsibility — laws make producers register, report, and pay fees on the packaging they ship, state by state. We supply the packaging-data spine your filing runs on: material type, weight, and format for every SKU, from real board specs. Registration with your PRO — the producer responsibility organization running the program — the reporting, and the fees stay with the producer — but we make the data side fast and keep it current each cycle.
EPR fees are eco-modulated: lighter, more-recyclable design costs less. Because we tie each SKU's material and weight to its fee tier, we can show you where a board or construction change lowers what you owe.
Send what you have — a carton, a dieline, or just the problem.