The Pressure Is Real and It’s Accelerating

If you run a corrugated or folding carton plant, this week brought news you can’t ignore. North America’s largest integrated containerboard producers have all announced price increases, the second wave this year, set to take effect June 1st. Announced amounts range from $50 to $70 per ton, stacked on top of the $70 per ton hikes already pushed through in March.

That’s not noise. It’s a structural margin squeezing, and it’s arriving in under 30 days.

Add rising fuel costs, tighter fiber supply (North American containerboard production fell 8% year over year in Q1, the steepest drop in years), energy price volatility tied to ongoing Middle East conflict, and shaky consumer confidence, and the picture is clear: your plant is being asked to produce more accurately, quote more profitably, and manage costs more precisely than at any point in recent memory.

The plants that survive this cycle won’t be the ones that cut the most. They’ll be the ones that know their numbers and quote from them.

Two Questions Every Corrugated Plant Needs to Answer Before June 1st

Do you know what your jobs actually cost to produce at the machine level? Does your estimating team have the tools to quote those jobs accurately, at speed?

If the answer to either question is not really, you are at risk in a rising-cost environment. Fortunately, Amtech gives you a two-layer answer to both.

Layer One: Know Your True Total Costs

Everybody knows that board prices are going up – comparing AP invoices to see the trend at your plant is a straightforward activity. Significantly fewer plants know the true total cost of producing a box at the granular levels of board grade, ink coverage, volume, routing and machine. As the entire industry is reacting to the changes, the sites that have the best chance of balancing cost increases with customer reactions to price increases are the ones that have a current and close-up view of their evolving total costs.

In oversimplified terms: if board cost increase 40% and you think they account for 50% of your totals, a 20% price increase is logical, right? Back-of-the-napkin math gets you to a reasonable direction, but it’s like verifying sheet thickness with a child’s ruler rather than calipers. Setting the right price – one that doesn’t scare customers or your CFO – requires precision. And in this environment, it requires speed.

Amtech’s Automated Performance Costing (APC), working directly with EnCore ERP, is where margin defense starts. APC pulls financial and production data directly from your ERP and lets operations teams allocate costs by account, by machine, and by weighted factor to derive what it truly costs to run each piece of equipment in your plant.

The granularity here matters. If one machine consumes more water, more energy, or more labor than another, APC lets you weight those allocations accordingly. The result isn’t an average, it’s an accurate per-machine cost that reflects your actual operation. APC also enables frequent updates and direct comparisons to existing cost models, so as input costs move, you’re not guessing at the impact. You’re calculating it.

This is the foundation. A quote is only as good as the cost model behind it.

Layer Two: Quote Faster to Win More

Whether or not you’ve achieved cost clarity, material price hikes introduce another problem: how do you get your estimating and quoting teams up to speed? Most plant leaders would say that the pace of turning customer inquires into quotes depends on the team that’s working on it. Though tribal knowledge and experience have gotten packaging plants to where they are, the frequency of cost and price changes has introduced yet another significant stressor.

On May 5th, Amtech launched AI-powered estimating and quoting enabled by the acquisition of Clarico Systems, the industry’s leading AI-powered estimating and quoting technology built for corrugated and folding carton manufacturers.

Where APC gives you deep cost intelligence, Amtech’s AI-powered estimating and quoting gives you speed and accuracy at the front end of the job. Applying artificial intelligence to the quoting workflow generates faster and more accurate quotes, reduces costly estimating errors, and improves win rates on competitive bids.

Think of it this way: Automated Performance Costing tells you what the job should cost. AI helps you quote it profitably before the customer moves on.

As our CEO Chuck put it: “Our customers are under enormous pressure from input costs, labor markets, and customer demands for faster turnaround. AI is not a luxury for this industry.”

He’s right. With experienced estimators retiring and new hires lacking institutional knowledge, the margin between a winning quote and a costly one has never been thinner.

Why This Matters for Your Team

For the CEO or Owner: June 1st is 25 days away. Every quote your team sends between now and then should be built on current costs, not last quarter’s assumptions. APC and AI-powered estimating and quoting together close that gap.

For the VP of Operations: Machine-level cost accuracy isn’t just a finance exercise. It’s the operational intelligence that tells you which jobs to take, which to reprice, and where your plant is leaking margin.

For the CIO or Head of IT: Both automated costing and AI-powered quoting live within your Amtech ecosystem, not as bolted-on tools that require separate management. Security is handled. Deployment is fast. Time-to-value is immediate.

Getting Started Today

1. Run Automated Performance Costing before June 1st. If your cost models haven’t been refreshed with current financial and production data, do it now. The upcoming price increases will hit differently depending on your machine mix and you need to know your exposure before you quote another job.

2. Talk to us about AI-powered estimating and quoting. Existing Encore customers can access AI-powered estimating and quoting capabilities within their current platform. Ask your Amtech representative how quickly you can be live.

The plants that enter Q3 with accurate cost models and AI-assisted estimating will protect their margins. The ones still working from static spreadsheets will be explaining the variance in their next board meeting.

This is exactly the kind of problem Amtech was built to solve for over 40 years. Explore our website to learn more about Automated Performance Costing, Amtech Intelligence, and how packaging plants are defending margin in a rising-cost market.

Amtech Software is the leading purpose-built provider of ERP, MES, and CRM software solutions for the global packaging and labels industry. Founded over 40 years ago, Amtech supports over 1,250 plants worldwide.