Canadian food-contact packaging manufacturer Enjay Converters has acquired New Method Packaging LLC, an Ohio-based designer and converter of custom corrugated and paper-based bakery and foodservice packaging. The deal gives Enjay a second North American manufacturing footprint and accelerates its ability to serve in-store bakeries, pizza operators, and foodservice distributors on both sides of the border. Financial terms were not disclosed.
What Changed Hands
Founded in 1982 by Neil Miller, New Method operates out of Springfield, Ohio across two adjacent facilities totaling roughly 140,000 square feet — a 97,000-square-foot production building and a 43,000-square-foot warehouse. Its core product lines include cake circles, trays and boards, ovenable baking trays, and carryout boxes sold primarily into bakery, pizza, and foodservice channels across the U.S. The acquisition also transfers leadership: Kevin Miller, who has led the company since 2006, will transition toward retirement while his son Jerad Miller assumes the presidency. The full management team and employee complement remain in place.
Enjay, co-founded in 1983 and headquartered in Cobourg, Ontario, already operates a 90,000-square-foot manufacturing and office facility alongside a 70,000-square-foot distribution centre. Its product mix overlaps substantially with New Method's — cake boards, paperboard circles, trays and boxes — while also covering muffin cups, disposable piping bags, and cupcake accessories. Those products move primarily through major grocery retail chains' in-store bakeries, independent bakeries, and food processors. Montréal-based Champlain Financial Corporation supported the transaction as Enjay's financial partner.
What This Signals for Operators
For procurement teams sourcing paper-based bakery packaging, this combination concentrates meaningful capacity under one ownership group at a moment when supply-chain resilience is a live concern for foodservice operators. Enjay's existing North American distribution relationships, combined with New Method's U.S. manufacturing base, should reduce lead times for buyers who currently split orders between Canadian and domestic suppliers. The ovenable baking tray category is worth watching specifically: demand from commissary bakeries and ghost-kitchen pizza operations has pressured capacity industry-wide, and a vertically integrated supplier with cross-border manufacturing is better positioned to absorb volume swings.
The deal also reflects a broader pattern in food packaging consolidation — family-owned converters reaching succession inflection points are increasingly absorbed by platform operators rather than passing to private equity. That structural shift compresses the number of independent mid-market suppliers available to foodservice buyers, which argues for locking in pricing and volume agreements with key packaging vendors before the landscape narrows further. Operators sourcing corrugated or paperboard packaging for bakery or pizza SKUs should use this moment to audit supplier concentration risk in their own procurement stack. For related intelligence on packaging procurement trends, see our operator intelligence coverage.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
