MODEX C-Suite Interview with Norm Kukuk: The Circular Economy Becomes a Core Priority

Norm Kukuk, President, ORBIS Corporation

MMH: What is your number one takeaway from MODEX 2024?

Kukuk: ORBIS has been collaborating on many fronts with our customers, and in some cases integrators, but at MODEX there were customers, system integrators, automation and robotics companies, technology companies and other different stakeholders. This opens the door for opportunities to get everyone together and working toward similar goals. This would require a more “collective conversation” across the different innovations that eventually touch each other in a customer network. I talked to a lot of people from different companies, like Onward Robotics’ CEO, Lance VandenBrook, and it was a really cool discussion about how our products work together to help the collective end customer. These are the types of collaborative conversations we should be having outside of this annual trade show.  

MMH: What are the top market trends taking place this year?

Kukuk: The number of automated systems being considered outside of warehouse automation continues to ramp up the pace of data analytics or Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Companies want to know how to use information to see how quickly their products are moving, where the hang-ups are and the amount of dwell time in the network. We’re also seeing more attention being focused on the circular economy versus just sustainability in general. It's refreshing to have some of those conversations where customers are talking about a circular economy. For us, it’s about taking the reusable packaging and keeping it circular, moving and being reused as much as possible. We heard a lot of these discussions at MODEX, where customers—not just the material handling equipment or packaging companies—are becoming increasingly focused on ensuring that their supply chain activities align with circular economy goals.

MMH: How is ORBIS responding to these market trends?

Kukuk: We're working on some exciting initiatives. We just announced a new manufacturing plant in Greenville, Texas (just outside of Dallas). We're adding significant capacity to ensure that we’re able to help service our customers with a broad range of reusable solutions. Our new facility in Greenville will support a lot of the growth in material handling automated systems as well as our customers who are expanding south or reshoring to southern U.S. states and Northern Mexico.