Colbert Packaging hires Lackner, Kenjarski to leadership roles

Colbert Packaging Corp. in Lake Forest welcomed John Lackner and Kevin Kenjarski to the company. Lackner joined Colbert Packaging as vice president of corporate operations, and Kenjarski will step into the newly created vice president of sales and marketing role.

Lackner has overall responsibility for production operations at Colbert's three facilities, including manufacturing, facilities maintenance, inventory management, and shipping and receiving. He came to Colbert Packaging from Graphic Packaging, formerly Walter G. Anderson, where he served as director of operations, overseeing two manufacturing facilities in the Midwest. Prior to that, he spent 23 years moving up the ranks at MeadWestvaco (now WestRock) and its AGI Media packaging business, which traded hands several times before eventually being acquired by Multi Packaging Solutions. Lackner gained valuable hands-on experience on the production floor early in his career while serving as a pressman and finishing department manager, and since then, he has proved to be a capable operations leader.

Kenjarski is leading a team of seasoned sales professionals. His focus is the company's strategic sales growth through maintaining, evaluating and earning opportunities at current customers, while pursuing new account development across all product lines. He will also oversee all marketing strategies.

Kenjarski brings a dual background in plastics and paperboard packaging to the Colbert leadership team. His credentials on the paperboard side include serving as vice president of sales and marketing for Clondalkin's specialist packaging division, which produced packaging solutions for the pharmaceutical, health care and personal care markets, and is now part of Essentra. He also spent a decade at MeadWestvaco in various sales and sales management capacities. Kenjarski is a customer-centric individual committed to fostering long-standing partnerships with customers.