Amcor acquired Bemis in 2019. If you source packaging for a medical device company—which I've done for seven years—that acquisition mattered more than you might think. My initial reaction to it was exactly wrong, and correcting course cost us $4,800 in preventable waste, fines, and rework.
My assumption at the time: "Another multinational absorbing a mid-size supplier, cutting costs, and eventually forcing us to re-qualify their entire product line." I treated the acquisition as a wait-and-see event. I said nothing to my team. I made no changes to how we managed Bemis as a supplier.
That passivity triggered three mistakes. Each was caused by an assumption I didn't verify. Here they are, in the order they happened, so you can avoid them.
Who I am and why you should read this
I lead packaging procurement for a manufacturer of single-use surgical instruments. I've managed this category since 2019, and before that I spent four years in print procurement—catalogs, posters, direct mail, packaging components. I've documented every significant mistake I've made since my first year in the industry (2017). This is my 17th documented mistake post. The three below are the ones I think about most.
Mistake #1: Treating the Amcor-Bemis acquisition as a non-event
When news broke that Amcor would acquire Bemis (announced June 2018, closed June 2019), I didn't even update our supplier risk register. Bemis was already qualified for our medical device packaging. I figured, "same facility, same products, same people"—why bother?
Turns out, an acquisition is the perfect time to review a supplier, not the reason to skip it. During our next audit, we discovered Amcor had invested heavily in sterilization validation resources that Bemis, as a standalone company, had lacked. That information was in Amcor's public disclosures since 2018. I missed it because I wasn't looking.
When Amcor's healthcare division reached out in Q3 2019 to walk us through their expanded capabilities, I deferred. Twice. Not because Amcor was a bully—they were onboarding hundreds of Bemis accounts, and we were just the ones who didn't respond. We also use a quality system that requires supplier change notifications, and I later learned our silence was logged as "no response" in their integration CRM. That's exactly the kind of thing that quietly reduces your account priority.
"You had one job," our VP said dryly.
The lesson: when a supplier is acquired, respond to the integration team. Review the new capability set. Re-qualify. We eventually did all of this—around a year later. Actually, closer to 14 months after the deal closed, give or take a few weeks. That's 14 months of operating on assumptions instead of facts.
Mistake #2: Choosing the cheapest replacement when Bemis discontinued a line
In Q1 2021, Amcor-Bemis discontinued a custom pouch line we used for a specific surgical kit. The transition was announced six months in advance—fair notice. But I was busy, so I did the easy thing: I sourced a replacement from a low-cost supplier who quoted 34% less than Amcor-Bemis's alternative.
That "$2,100 savings" turned out to be fiction.
- Extra sterilization testing for the new material: $1,150
- Failed seals on 400 pouches out of 3,000 units: $890 in scrapped product
- Re-work billed by our quality department: $1,860 in internal labor
Net result: we spent $1,800 more than if we had gone with the Amcor-Bemis solution. The non-financial cost was worse—a nine-day production delay, two missed customer shipment dates, and our QA lead had to cancel a certification class to revalidate the replacement material.
I'd love to say this was my first time making that mistake. It wasn't. In my print procurement days (2017), I chose a budget printer for a 40-page client catalog—a Black Expressions catalog, if you know the brand—and learned the exact same lesson: the cheapest quote doesn't account for what goes wrong. Same lesson, different substrate. You'd think I'd have learned.
To be fair, Amcor-Bemis's replacement required a minimum order quantity 50% higher than I wanted. But when I ran the total-cost calculation, the MOQ difference was irrelevant compared to the validation data, quality consistency, and regulatory knowledge that came with the qualified option.
The pattern repeats beyond packaging, too. In 2023, a distribution client printed a Satyaprem Ki Katha movie poster campaign with the lowest bidder. The paper stock was too light for their own laminating process; 600 posters tore during finishing, and the campaign launched ten days late. Price savings: $400. Rush reprint plus air freight: $1,600. (I really should pull those numbers from the file instead of from memory.)
Mistake #3: Answering "can you put a FedEx envelope in the mailbox?" wrong
A teammate once asked me: "Can you put a FedEx envelope in the mailbox?" A colleague wanted to send a sample from home to a client without driving 25 minutes to a FedEx drop-off.
"Of course not," I said. "Mailboxes are only for USPS." Half right, which is the dangerous kind of right.
Here's what the regulations actually say, verified after a USPS carrier flagged the envelope our colleague left in a mailbox:
- Residential mailboxes are authorized solely for the deposit of postage-paid USPS mail, per U.S. federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1725) and the USPS Domestic Mail Manual.
- A standard FedEx Express or FedEx Ground envelope placed in a mailbox is a violation. Fines can reach $5,000 per occurrence.
- Exception: FedEx Ground Economy (formerly SmartPost) envelopes that travel through the USPS network for final delivery can be placed in a mailbox—at that point, they're effectively USPS mail.
In our case, it was a standard FedEx envelope, not SmartPost. The carrier reported it, we avoided the fine but paid a $190 return fee, and received a strongly worded letter about mailbox misuse. Cheap compared to the $5,000 exposure.
This is worth sharing because "common sense" about shipping regulations is often wrong in the details. The same applies to packaging decisions everywhere: sterilization validation, material traceability, REACH/RoHS compliance. I don't have hard data on what percentage of packaging failures trace back to unverified assumptions, but based on seven years in this job, my sense is it's at least a third. Maybe closer to half, if I include near-misses.
What this means for you
If you're a packaging buyer and your supplier has been through an acquisition—Bemis was acquired by Amcor, but the pattern applies broadly—here are three practices worth adopting:
- Treat an acquisition as a trigger event. Re-review your supplier's capabilities, product lines, and compliance documentation. The best time was the day "Amcor acquires Bemis" was announced. The second-best time is today. Check bemis.amcor.com for current product information (as of January 2025, at least).
- Price is where the conversation starts, not where it ends. Whether it's packaging materials, a print catalog, or a movie poster run, every purchase is a bet on total cost, not unit price.
- Look up the regulation before you answer the question. For current USPS mailbox rules, check usps.com. For packaging compliance, ask your supplier for their validation documentation and verify it.
Where this advice doesn't apply
Not everything I did was wrong. Bemis's original packaging performed well for us for years, and Amcor's acquisition didn't degrade it. The budget supplier in Mistake #2 wasn't a bad company—they just weren't qualified for our sterilization requirement. If we'd run the qualification testing from the start, their solution could have worked.
I'm not anti-cheaper suppliers. I'm anti-unverified assumptions.
This advice applies most directly to regulated industries—medical devices, pharmaceuticals, food-contact packaging—where supplier qualification is critical. If you're buying generic corrugated boxes, the rigor can be lower.
Granted, larger companies have more leverage to request validation data and custom test runs. Smaller companies may not have that flexibility. If you're in that position, focus on the regulatory sources—those don't require leverage to access.
One last thing: the $4,800 was annoying, but what bothered me more was the erosion of trust with our internal stakeholders. Every "sure, that'll work" that doesn't work costs relationships. That's the cost that doesn't show up in any P&L. And it's the one I still think about.
