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Home > Featured Stories > Power of Partnerships > August 2007 > Packaging Partnership a Box at a TimePackaging Partnership a Box at a Time
"There is no better place for us to be. A lot of universities talk innovation and economic development. NC State practices it."
Jack Goldfrank, president of MeadWestvaco Center for Packaging Innovation
MeadWestvaco designers work on prototypes in their Centennial Campus office.
It’s the potential for partnership that led MeadWestvaco, a $6 billion global company, to choose North Carolina State University’s Centennial Campus as the location for its Center for Packaging Innovation.
“There is no better place for us to be,” said Jack Goldfrank, president of the Center for Packaging Innovation. “A lot of universities talk innovation and economic development. NC State practices it.”
The Center for Packaging Innovation helps customers strengthen brand recognition, secure contents from theft or tampering and improve shelf appeal. Packaging may even help solve global challenges. In parts of India, for example, as much as 70 percent of the perishable food supply spoils on the way from rural farms to the marketplace because of the lack of protective packaging.
Goldfrank said NC State faculty and students have helped his company’s employees “do better work on the front end of innovation.”
A national model for unique partnerships, Centennial Campus unites research, innovation and collaboration leading to ground-breaking science and technologies that solve contemporary problems. More than 130 companies, government agencies, and NC State research and academic units call Centennial Campus home. "We were amazed at what NC State could bring to the table in terms of both technology as well as business expertise. Our association with NC State puts us in the middle of a global hub of innovation that we never expected to find," said Goldfrank.
“The Centennial Campus model is all about partnerships,” said David Winwood, associate vice chancellor for technology development. “This is not just a place where a business or agency can find office space. This is a destination where we ask potential partners to come here with the idea that they will create relationships with NC State students and faculty – relationships that are beneficial and successful for all participants.”