At 17, Derek Volk started on the production floor of the box plant his grandfather and father built in Biddeford, Maine. After working every production and administrative role in the facility, he eventually stepped into ownership. Today, he is president and CEO of Volk Packaging Corporation, and the company still runs on the motto of its founder, his grandfather Benjamin Volk: “Our customers are our bread and butter.” The company notes that the phrase “is still frequently spoken by associates who never even met Ben Volk.”
Volk Packaging designs and manufactures custom corrugated boxes in a 141,000-square-foot Biddeford facility. Described as “Maine’s only locally owned and operated corrugated box manufacturer,” the company makes a straightforward case for buying local: “When you buy from Volk,” Derek Volk told Mainebiz, “all the money stays in the state.” He sums up their core mission just as plainly: “If you’re making something and you need to get it somewhere, that’s where we come in.”
Photo Courtesy Volk Packaging Corporation
Benjamin Volk and his son Kenneth broke ground in 1967, becoming the first tenants in the new Biddeford Industrial Park, choosing Maine “over other New England locations because of the strong textile industry that thrived in the state at the time.” Box production began in 1968 with five employees, two of whom stayed for 30 years. Kenneth’s brother Douglas joined in 1974, and the plant grew over the decades as Derek became the third-generation leader.
Volk Packaging serves more than 1,000 manufacturers, distributors, and producers across New England, and no single customer accounts for more than 8% of its business. ”Every order is custom, and Volk boxes carry everything from food and beverage products to furniture and machine parts, while its display stands hold apples, beer, and frozen lobster products. The company once built a box for a piano.
Some of the most loyal buyers are among the smallest. “There are a lot of people we do business with who make wicker chairs in their garage or candles in their kitchen,” Volk told Mainebiz. “They all need boxes.” As of 2015, he was making a “thank you tour” each January to visit customers in person. “People aren’t going to buy from us because we make a good box,” he said. “A lot of people make a good box. They’ll buy from us because we care about their business.”
The company has also developed its own products. Working with a paper company, it created Supershield, a wax-free box for shipping wet foods such as seafood. Because the box is biodegradable, food markets do not have to keep it separate from other boxes. “People have been trying to do this for 30 years, unsuccessfully,” Volk told Mainebiz. “We’ve done it.” The company still sells Supershield today.
Photo Courtesy Box Of Maine
Keeping up with customers has meant steady investment. When Derek Volk announced a new flexo folder-gluer in early 2020, he said it would cut setup time for each new job from an average of 29 minutes to under five, and he estimated the faster changeovers would add the equivalent of 322 shifts of work a year. “It’s a game-changer for us,” he said. “We’ve kept up our machines really well, and we have an incredible maintenance department. But this brings our operations to a whole new level.” The machine was part of a larger $7 million investment to upgrade operations.
When business grew by almost 50% between 2019 and 2023, the company committed another $8 million to an additional folder-gluer and a five-color rotary die cutter, financed primarily through Maine-based Bangor Savings Bank. “We need more machinery to live out my grandfather’s mantra that ‘our customers are our bread and butter,'” Volk said. Both machines were installed in 2024.
Volk framed the decision in sporting terms. “If I didn’t make this investment, it’d be like playing Roger Federer with a wooden tennis racquet.”
Photo Courtesy Volk Packaging Corporation
The company employed about 120 people in 2025, and 21% of them had worked there for more than 20 years, while 48% had been there for more than 10 years. “An amazing 10% of our workforce has spent at least half of their lives working at the company, with our senior employee, Michelle Morin, marking 44 years of service in 2025,” Volk told BoxScore. He credits a lesson from home: “My father always told me to never forget that the employees work with you, not for you, and that we all work for the customer.”
Each year, the company gives the Benjamin Volk Award for Excellence to an associate who has shown the “excellence, passion, and dedication” of its founder. In 2020, Volk took every employee out for a meal through a program he called “Breaking Bread with Derek.” “People open up when you have a meal with them,” he said in a 2021 interview with Board Converting News. Every two years, employees also compete in the Corrugated Olympics. “It’s a combination of corrugated cross-country skiing, hockey, and basketball,” Amy Volk, Derek’s wife, told the publication. “We even have a corrugated podium and medals.” In 2021, Volk Packaging was named one of the Best Places to Work in Maine for the second time.
Photo Courtesy Volk Packaging Corporation
Volk Packaging has collected and recycled corrugated materials for more than 50 years. It also recycles the water and plastic used in manufacturing, and prints with water-based inks. It also offers packaging certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). In 2024 alone, its recycling diverted more than 600 tons of corrugated waste and saved over 15,000 trees.
The Biddeford plant added heat recapture technology and, in 2021, installed 80,000 square feet of rooftop solar, and the company says the array was built to supply power “not only for our machinery but to our community as well.”
Photo Courtesy Volk Packaging Corporation
On the lawn outside the plant stands the Heroes Wall, a 50-foot, two-sided wall with room for 700 tiles honoring veterans. The public can visit it year-round, around the clock. New tiles honoring veterans go up between May and October, since they need at least 24 hours of 55-degree weather to bond to the wall. All proceeds go to the local Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) posts in Biddeford, Saco, and Old Orchard Beach, and donations from local businesses and individuals fund scholarship tiles for families who cannot afford one.
The company has given almost $45,000 to the VFW through the wall, and it also donates custom printed boxes to veterans’ homes across New England so families “have respectful moving boxes when a vet passes,” BoxScore reported.
Employees also give through their paychecks to two Maine veterans’ organizations, the Travis Mills Foundation and House in the Woods. Employees collect pledges during an annual Community Support Week around Halloween, complete with penny wars for charity, a costume contest, and a corrugated pumpkin patch. In 2020, after joining veterans on a bear hunt at House in the Woods, Derek pledged a company match of 50% of employee donations or $5,000, whichever was larger. Participation topped 100%, the company says, because even some temporary workers turned in pledge cards. Most recently, on September 1, 2026, Derek’s birthday, the whole company went out in teams to volunteer at 17 locations around the community.
Photo Courtesy Volk Packaging Corporation
Volk Packaging received the Governor’s Award for Business Excellence in 2012 and was named Large Business of the Year by the Biddeford/Saco Chamber of Commerce in 2020. Derek was also inducted into the Manufacturers Association of Maine Hall of Fame in 2020.
The company also opens its doors to others in the industry. For May 2025, it invited chief financial officers from manufacturing companies to a forum at its Biddeford headquarters to trade ideas. It scheduled a free “BOX 101” workshop for June 4, 2026, open to anyone whether or not they buy from Volk, with a plant tour and a classroom session covering board grades, box styles, and the basics of reading a price quote.
The company’s mission statement reads: “Led by God, managed by a family that cares for our customers, co-workers, and community. Making boxes while making a difference.” Its core values spell out CARE: customer centric, accountability, respect, and excellence.
Volk measures his own work by that mission. “If I die and my obituary says, ‘He sold a lot of boxes,’” he told BoxScore, “I’ll be disappointed.”
