Every year, the Members, Champions and Suppliers in the Packaging Distributors of America community come together to identify business opportunities, share best practices and celebrate success.

Packaging Distributors of America’s 13th annual meeting took place at the Ritz Carlton in Dove Mountain, Marana, AZ, on Sunday May 19th to Wednesday May 22nd. Our member distributors and preferred suppliers joined together to review the year to date progress, welcome new members and suppliers, raise money for charity, and celebrate achievements.

The Welcome Reception kicked off on Sunday evening, as the community gathered for a hand-crafted meal and special announcements from PDA president, George Strobel.George introduced our visitors this year from Strickland Paper as well as gave an official PDA welcome to new Member Morrisette!

Following the welcome announcements, George announced the winners of the raffle drawing. Every year PDA has a raffle drawing to benefit a local charity. The raffle winners received gift cards to the Ritz Carlton, Amazon, and more. Winners of this year’s raffle were: Dorcas Richmond-David (Tach It), Amy Packer (Hughes Enterprises), Tracy Suta (Katzke Paper), Jim Dawson (Morrisette Packaging), and Heidi Cooper (Flexpak).

On Monday, the general session began with a few words from PDA’s president, George Strobel, and PDA’s chairman of the board, Ken Wong (Crownhill Packaging). George welcomed guests and new member Morrisette, announced that Nick Mihacevich (M-Line) would be rotating onto the board, and shared other important upcoming meeting dates.

Following the opening comments, Ken Wong welcomed our 2019 keynote guest speaker, Gair Maxwell, international speaker and author. Maxwell enlightened the audience with his captivating talk titled The Branding Highway. Maxwell has extensive experience with building unforgettable brands for Fortune 500 companies. His marketing and advertising experience has led him to 3 key areas in branding: differentiation, delivery, and direction – which he expanded upon for our audience. Click here to learn more about Gair Maxwell. 

On Tuesday afternoon, over 40 of our members and suppliers took a break from conference rooms to participate in our annual charity golf tournament, held at The Golf Club at Dove Mountain.

All of the money that was raised during the Welcome Reception raffle and the charity golf tournament went to Casa de los Ninos, a non-profit organization that raises money to help families stay together:

We build healthy families by: Promoting positive parenting practices through parent enrichment classes that cover current topics related to caring for children, from infants to teenagers; and, Educating parents about the principles of early childhood development – through home based instruction and in-home nursing visits for parents of newborns, in order to boost child health and school readiness.

On the final evening of the meeting, all attendees and family members came together for an awards dinner. Our president, George Strobel, introduced our annual charity contribution, and the 2019 award winners

Member of the Year: Pacific Packaging

David Varsano, and his team at Pacific Packaging, have always stayed true to their belief that PDA is the finest packaging organization in the business.

Supplier of the Year: Tach-It

Steven Clements, CEO of Tach-It, commented that he was proud to accept the award and be part of the PDA community

Champion of the Year: Jack Anderson, Flexpak

George Strobel informed the group that the champion of the year is someone who dedicates their time to finding ways to help others in the group, and being the backbone of their relationship with PDA.

2019 President’s Award: Olivia Pietersen, Crownhill

This is the only award that is selected by PDA President, George Strobel; he selects an individual who shows an unwavering dedication to contributing to PDA. This award is to honor the hard work that often goes unnoticed by most.

Like our previous annual meetings, this year’s reunion was filled with an enthusiasm for the continued growth of Packaging Distributors of America.