Meet my benefactor.
By pure luck, I happened to sit down next to a man last week, who has been my benefactor
for my entire life and the large part of his, and yet we had never met.
In fact, though he has been serving me faithfully for three decades, looking after my well-being
and trying to improve my standard of living, he didn't even know my name.
Actually, he still doesn't, because it is slightly odd to get too personal with the
The guy in the next seat on a plane, we all know this.
And yet, I did tell him of my deep gratitude for all he has done.
This man is in charge of marketing for one of six manufacturing plants in North America
that makes oriented polypropylene for packaging materials.
This substance is called OPP for short.
He goes around to companies that make stuff like drinks and candies and other products
and explains to them the advantages of OPP, about which more in a bit.
This man is on the road constantly and has a stack of airline reward cards to prove it.
He is like the George Clooney character in the movie Up in the Air, a seasoned traveler
married to his work.
His work is to be the eyes and ears of the company as it deals with its product purchasers.
His life is lived in the B2B, the business to business transactions that are invisible
to the consuming public.
His vocabulary is industry specific, filled with neologisms that no one outside of the
packaging world could understand.
He can tell you the chemical properties of a bag from five feet away.
He can explain why a bag is easier to tear one way and harder the other.
He knows the history, the process, the competition, plus the name of every large-scale bag purchasing
manager in North America, and he is happy to talk all about it.
What is his function?
He is the man who makes the inventions and the productions part of our lives.
Without the person on the front lines actually selling the products, everything that went
into the invention and production is pointless.
He is the interface between the raw materials and the final product.
The man who has to have all the answers that link the great chain of the structure of production
from first to last.
As for his product, you and I both know OPP well, though we probably don't know what
it is called.
It is the stuff that is used to make potato chip bags.
It is the reason that the contents stay crisp no matter what the humidity outside.
You can dip the bag in water, and it changes nothing.
The air can be hot or cold, and still, the chips inside are unchanged.
The same material wraps candy like Snickers, and the effect is the same.
It is also the reason that these bags can be so beautiful.
OPP loves printing.
It is a perfect template for designers.
The results never rub off on your fingers, nor does the printing fade in the sun.
It can accept even the most subtle gradations in color.
You could print a work of Michelangelo on OPP and hang it in a museum.
It turns out that potatoes fried in oil are super vulnerable to becoming rancid.
Maybe you thought it was chemical preservatives, up with those too, that prevented this.
That is part of the answer, but not the whole answer.
The real reason is OPP.
This is what stops the degenerative process.
This is not a problem for other fried items like pork rinds, which is why they often come
in see-through bags.
OPP is not see-through, and that is good.
The product inside doesn't like the light.
OPP keeps that out too.
OPP has other nice features.
It has a very low dead-fold capacity, which is why, when you wad up a potato chip bag,
it bounces right back to its original shape.
This is to protect the contents inside.
That's why in the 1960s, bags of potato chips came with crumbled contents, but today they
are mostly intact and perfect.
You thought it was just because it was filled with air?
Well, ask yourself why the air doesn't escape.
The answer again, OPP, it seals perfectly.
This stuff is impenetrable.
And get this, this is a petroleum product, that's right, it is made of a material derived
from oil.
So the price of the stuff fluctuates according to the price of oil.
When the price of oil goes up, your chips become more expensive, due mainly to the packaging,
which is also why the OPP industry is firmly attached to the idea of liberalizing the regulations
on the discovery and refining of oil.
My Benefactor Marketing Manager is very interested in this.
Now, all of this is pretty cool and wonderful, but let's get down to the core rationale
here.
What is all the fuss about?
Why was OPP invented?
And why is it marketed?
And why is it used so much around the world?
Why does this man spend his life on the road and follow every bit of industry news?
What is the point of all of this?
It is for one reason, my well-being, yours too.
It is to please us and make our lives that much better.
It is for the consumer that the producer produces and it is for the consumer that everyone in
all stages of production strives to make an ever better product.
It all comes down to that bag of chips you pick up with your submarine sandwich.
This is why millions of people in the OPP industry around the world dance the dance.
It is why the potatoes are grown, chopped, fried, bagged and shipped to millions and
millions of places.
The heck of it is that these people get no credit, no bag of chips says, this bag is
made by Joe's OPP factory.
No, they are anonymous benefactors of society.
Hardly anyone thinks of them.
And yet, if you bought a bag of chips that was full of rancid crumbs, you would know
the difference.
You would be annoyed at the store that sold them, at the company that made them, and maybe
even at the economic system that allows people to profit from selling bad stuff.
Private OPP producers prevent this from happening millions and millions of times per day.
You and I are running this show and we don't even know it.
The producers of these bags are serving us slavishly every day and we don't know or
care.
And somehow it all happens without a central planner, without government mandates, and
without state-owned factories or smart people at the top directing the process from beginning
to end.
All that needs to take place to bring about this complex and brilliant system is that
we have to have a desire, a desire for a good potato chip.
The rest happens on its own, a self-managing system that responds to the tiniest of signals.
So I would like to send a message to my benefactor who has devoted his life to explaining to
food producers the merits of OPP.
My message is, thank you.
I suspect that I might be the first consumer who has ever said so, but in my ideal world,
billions of people would be giving thanks to you and everyone else like you.
You are all servants of the great cause of making the world a better place to live.