Apple Converting Shows County Plant Up To Task

By JIM KEVLIN


ONEONTA

As Chobani flourishes and multiplies, it presents opportunities for local suppliers, but only quality local suppliers that can keep up.
“They will not outgrow us,” vowed Mike Manno, Cooperstown resident and Apple Converting owner. 
In January, the operation in Pony Farm Industrial Park began producing all of the lids for the individual Chobani yogurt containers – and plans to prove itself so it can win the label contract as well.
“Converting” is a forming of fabricating packaging that combines  two products – aluminum and plastic sheeting, for instance – to create a new product.
Next time you pick up a Chobani container, look at the lid, feel the texture, examine the sharply printed logo:  All of that is part of a process Manno and his team developed for the yogurt maker over a year.
“Other people who do this weren’t going to tell us how,” he said.  “We had to figure it out ourselves.”
And it doesn’t happen like magic.  Chobani owner Hamdi Ulukaya calls himself a “perfectionist,” and Manno has a quality-control inspector check the lids at close intervals as they come off the press.
In a separate quality-control department, lids are checked again for color sharpness, and measured with calipers to ensure the printing is centered.
Chobani’s lid maker is offshore, and the company was delighted to discover a key component of its manufacturing process could be obtained a few miles away.
Apple Converting also had a reputation for quality – it makes the labels for Lindt, the high-end chocolate maker, and packaging for the medical field, like Becton-Dickinson – and that helped.