Federal Contracting: Think Out of the Box!

What comes to mind when you think “defense contractor”? Tanks, weapons, maybe uniforms or boots? But, the truth is, the Department of Defense probably buys nearly every good or service a Michigan company can produce. In fact, the Genesee Group is one such Michigan company.

For the past 20 years, Genesee Group, also known as Genesee Packaging, has been contracting with the DoD to provide warehousing, packaging, processing, and distribution.

Genesee Packaging was originally founded in 1979 as an automotive contract packaging company in Flint, Michigan.  They later expanded to work with the Federal government to provide supply chain management, warehousing, sequencing and direct shipment distribution in the 1990’s.  Today they market to automotive, agriculture, aerospace, apparel, internet sales, electronics, material handling, food & beverage, pharmaceutical, retail sales, defense & government, a truly diverse portfolio.

A government supplier asked Genesee Packaging to help develop containers that would pass on-site government quality inspections and keep their product flowing into the supply chain while still using military materials.  Up to the challenge, Genesee revised the specifications on the container and incorporated a production process to ensure that the product reached the receiver in pristine condition while still maintaining military specification standards.

Jane Worthing, President and CEO of Genesee Group, “We provide a lot of packaging materials.  I would say one of the largest volume things that we provide is bubble wrap.  We have shipped locally and we have shipped as far away as Afghanistan.  We’ve shipped stretch wrapped machines, stretch wrap and a lot of cartons.  There is a lot of packaging by the industry, so for us that’s a market”.

For more information on resources or assistance to market your product or service to the federal government, check out www.arsenalofinnovation.com or www.PTACsofMichigan.org.

For more information on Genesee Group, check out http://genpackaging.com/.