Graphic Packaging International, Inc., a global leader in the packaging industry, announced an agreement to utilize Merrimak Capital Company, a certified Woman-Owned Business, for its material handling equipment leases.

Merrimak Capital Company, the industry's leading full service equipment management company and equipment lessor providing global solutions, worked with Graphic Packaging to jointly develop this new leasing model. 

"We are thrilled with our exclusive agreement with Merrimak Capital Company to act as our vested partner in the leasing industry" said Mike Smith, Director of Strategic Sourcing and Supplier Diversity at Graphic Packaging.  "Through Merrimak Capital Company's unique approach of providing transparency and partnership to leasing, they are taking the mystery out of the unregulated leasing industry while also providing supplier diversity spend and lower costs." 

"We are leveraging Merrimak to manage our Material Handling Equipment Leases.  Moving forward with this jointly created program, active leases were purchased and incorporated into the new platform to drive and assure tangible cost savings.  The program will improve efficiencies and eliminate unidentified and unfavorable terms and conditions which can be found in leasing contracts.  This will result in a vested win-win partnership between the two organizations."

"I met Merrimak at the NMSDC Business Fair in San Diego through the efforts of Clayton Judge, Manager of Sustainability and Supplier Diversity at MillerCoors," reported Smith.

"The MillerCoors Supplier Diversity mission is to drive the development and growth of minority and woman-owned businesses.  That includes working with our suppliers to improve their diversity programs," Judge added. 

Clayton invited Graphic Packaging to attend the National Minority Supplier Diversity Council's National Business Fair as guests at the MillerCoors booth.  The business fair is held every year and it provides a chance for certified diversity firms to meet procurement professionals from some of the largest companies in North America, including MillerCoors.  During the informal meetings, the representatives from the diverse firms get a chance to connect with buyers and to pitch their products and services.

"It was during one of these informal sessions that I met Mary Kariotis, the CEO of Merrimak.  I told her we wanted to move in a different direction under a new lease structure that we had developed internally.  She was very interested, and we discussed the common benefit both companies could receive through collaboration to develop this product." 

Andrew Boone, Sourcing Manager for Material Handling Equipment at Graphic Packaging commented "we'd developed a new leasing model that we presented to our incumbent leasing partners, but they weren't open to modifying their approach to leasing.  Merrimak, however, was great to work with.  They took our conceptual idea and helped us convert it into a workable solution."

"The result is a new leasing product that will provide transparency, savings and increased equipment availability within our fleet.  This is a great new product for us, but just as important, Merrimak has a new leasing product they can now market to other customers."  

"The exclusive agreement with Graphic Packaging is one we hope to be able to replicate for other clients in order to continuously provide our customers with complete transparency and savings coupled with trust," said Mary Kariotis, CEO of Merrimak Capital Company.  "We are expanding our partnership with many lessees and will proudly continue to do so.